I'm Here to Help
by Mark Doherty
Summary: It has now come to this. I have lived too long, failed too often, and lost all that matters. Grant me this one last gamble. Grant me an end to our eternal conflict. Grant me the death of she who enslaved our world with its Purification. Grant me Serenity.
1. Chapter 1

PLEASE NOTE that flames on this story will be ignored. I originally released this story to the Usenet in 1998, so I'm well aware that some people view this story very emotionally. 

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use.

To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" (you should understand pretty quickly) are marked with -#- at the start and end.

* * *

**-#-**

Crystal Tokyo.

Crystalline structures, delicate spires of magic reaching to the heavens like angel's wings.

People laughed, people smiled, people almost never cried. Why would they? They lived in Utopia.

I hate it. I hate them. I hate her.

Serenity. 'Neo-Queen' Serenity.

They call her a goddess. The gods know she is worshipped as one in that pristine, soulless hell.

I call her the devil. She is the culmination of everything I have ever fought against: she is a tyrant. Oh, to be sure, she is a benevolent one. Certainly, within the walls of her antiseptic little community, you'd never hear a word of protest about their 'noble queen'.

I bet the trains run on time there too. Or whatever form of transport they use these days. It has been a while since I've gone near that sterile pit, after all.

I fought Mars a decade ago. That day cost me more in energy drain than the previous three centuries. But it had been almost worth it, almost worth it to be able to fight a Senshi for as long as I did and not die... but then she called me evil.

Evil? Evil was to live in a world of black and white, and to think you are the white. Evil was to say 'You are evil, I am good.' Evil was to view the world in absolutes. Evil was a lie.

And so was this city.

But what could I do? Power? I have power. Some of it's even mine. I've even almost matched the Senshi in my rare encounters with one or another of them. But there is power, and then there is Serenity. Many a fool hasn't lived long enough to learn that mistake.

But... but, but, but there is a way. I don't know if I can do it, I don't know if I have the power, and I certainly don't know if I can get past the legendary guardian, but it's worth a try.

Time is the key. With time, I can set things right. I can find peace.

I will do it. Perhaps I will die. Perhaps I will have never existed at all, perhaps I shall be wiped from the time stream. Perhaps nothing at all will happen. Somehow, I don't care. After over nine hundred years, I just don't care.

Grant me an end to this. Grant me the death of the one who started it all. Grant me Serenity.

And grant that my soul is long since gone, lest it be sent to hell for what I have become.

And above all... allow me to dream those power dreams. Allow me to dream in peace. Allow me the dream of my youth.

Because sometimes, dreams are all we have.

- Last entry in a small diary that was found by scavengers near Crystal Tokyo, in the year 2911 AD. When this entry was written, and by whom remains unknown.

**-#-**

* * *

Nightime in Tokyo. Crowds thronged the city streets, most putting aside the concerns of work for a small time to enjoy life. Groups of teenagers congregated in malls and arcades, having fun and being together, eating and going to movies and playing the games, like the new one based on that supergirl over in England, Sailor V. 

He staggered through the crowds, ignoring the looks and the way people were crossing the street to avoid him. Must be the clothes.

Petty, discriminated humanity. One moment full of happiness and love, the next full of anger and hate.

He smiled. He'd missed this Tokyo. Dirty, crowded, full of people who could insult you while remaining unfailing polite to you... oh yes, he'd missed this Tokyo. It was HUMAN, so unlike the brainwashed cattle that occupied this city in the future.

He stumbled against a wall, before he edged into an nearby alleyway. He needed rest, he needed food, he needed energy. He needed energy desperately.

Time was the key. But energy was the lock. It had taken all the power he had to make it here. Back, back so long ago. Back to when the Senshi were merely girls with interesting powers in silly suits. As opposed, of course, to women with horrifically intense powers... in silly suits.

He edged back into the shadows. The last thing he needed was to be seen by some police officer or another. He didn't drain himself of centuries of gathered energy to get here, only to be arrested for vagrancy.

Not that it would matter. Time, apparently, was on his side. He had made it. He was as weak as a babe, certainly, but he had made it. He had walked the halls of time, he had done the unthinkable, he had travelled almost a thousand years without Pluto's aid.

He winced, gently grasping a thong necklace and pulling it out of his clothes.

"We did it, my friend. We can try for a better world."

He smiled. Only one thing worried him about his journey.

Where had been the Guardian of Time?

* * *

She looked down at him from the roof of the building he leaned against. 

To see the lines of time, to see the strings of fate, of destiny, to have to observe... was it any wonder that her office had not changed hands every century or so, like the other Senshi had in the Silver Millenium? The chances of finding a girl every century willing to do what she had to do was slim. Finding one every millenium was a small chance, for that matter.

He was as much an enemy to her queen as the worst of others. He hated her ruler more than any other she had ever seen, even Beryl. He would, she had no doubt, destroy all of time to see Serenity die, if given the chance.

She almost pitied him. He was more trapped by time's whim than she.

Pluto blinked. And then she was gone.

* * *

**-#-**

I was human once. Grew up all over the place. Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka, some time in Hong Kong... all sorts of places. Hard to remember them all, I have covered the world a thousand times since, and nine hundred years of memories tend to run together after a while.

I was born... how embarassing, I cannot remember the name I was given when I was born. After so many centuries, I somehow don't think a name really matters. I am me. And that is all that matters.

One day I acquired power. How and when, I need not write. I only put down that which I may forget, and I will never forget my 'rebirth'. Still, even with the power I had gained, I managed to live a normal life for a while.

It couldn't last. 'Monster' attacks just got worse and worse as the years progressed. Eventually, what little family I had left was threatened. I chose to fight. I did okay for myself, I only got almost killed three or four times.

I didn't have my... problems with the Senshi back then. We even fought in a couple of battles together. They were always distant, I noticed. Mars never liked me, and Jupiter wasn't much better. I remember wondering why at the time, but they never gave me a reason for their attitude. I remember being quite cocky, perhaps I rubbed them the wrong way. Still, there was no true animosity between us.

That came later. After Sailor Moon's death. After Serenity emerged from whatever hiding hole she had been in. After the ice.

Dear gods, why did it have to be ice?

- Discovered written in the margins of a tattered physics book in an abandoned lean-to, in what was Los Angeles, 2873.

**-#-**

* * *

Finally, the crowds thinned. He had taken the time to compose himself. He grunted, pushing himself up into a standing position against the wall. After a three second count, he stepped out of the alley. 

One step, one step at a time. He drew the ambient energy in. The breeze whistling past, pulling at his light brown, tattered, knee-length wraparound cloak. A pause at a fountain, to breath in the water-vapoured air, and to wash out his goggles, which were covered in dirt and sand. The electricity from overhead lines, the heat from nearby shop heaters, each and every element that he could, he drew from. It wasn't much, but until he found something a lot better, it would do.

He looked around, noting again how people avoided him. He looked down at himself. Maybe it was the long pants, or the soft boots. Maybe wearing the hood of the cloak in public was a bit much. Maybe he shouldn't have put the goggles back on. He had a profound thought. Maybe he looked like an idiot.

He lifted the goggles and rubbed at his eyes. He needed clothes. He needed money for clothes. And he'd kill for a beer.

Well, moderately maim anyway.

He shook his head. Money could wait. Energy could not. He needed something better than the ambient energy he was drawing. He turned his head, looking one way, then another. Finally, he smiled, turned, and walked down a street.

One step at a time.

* * *

The youma shut the door to her small apartment. She was one of the few entrusted by General Jadeite for long term deployment on the Earth. While other youma got the short, flashy, quick energy drain jobs, it was hers and others jobs to stay amongst the humans, keeping a small and slight energy drain on the poor sheep, so slight a drain that they probably never even noticed. It was the job of her and her kind to be a backup for the General, giving him a small but almost constant flow of energy. 

It was her particular job to act as one of Japan Rail's train operators. The overcrowded trains, full of gropers, pickpockets, the tired and irritable, the overworked, the overstressed, the claustrophobic... with the average resentment, anger and fear generated energy from a typical rush hour ride, you could light a youma city for a month.

By youma standards, things were looking good for her. She was in a safe but important position, visible to her General, but on another planet from her fellow back-stabbing youma. Important enough to gain status, not important enough to require going through a draining teleport back to the Kingdom after every day, she was enjoying a pseudo-independance that she found was actually... pleasureable.

"Greetings." The cloaked and hooded man stepped out of the shadows of the small closet that stood near the door. "Help me in my cause."

The youma blinked. "Huh? What are you doing in here? You've really made a stupid mistake if you think you can rob me."

"Give me your energy, unnatural one. I promise to make the ending quick."

Her eyes widened. "What? How did..." Her eyes narrowed. Some human had found out about the Dark Kingdom. The instructions on what to do about information leaks were explicit. The youma dropped her glamour, rising to her full seven foot height. "Now you die, foolish..." Something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong, and had been since she stepped into her small apartment. Why did she feel so lethargic?

"Too late for a fight, little one." His brown cloth-gloved hands, glowing slightly with green energy, struck forward, once, twice, pulverizing the bones in her arms. She didn't even have time to start a scream of pain before his hands shot out again, clutching at her throat.

She struggled. She tried to bring her arms up, to fire off one of her energy attacks, but her arms were broken, useless. And she felt so lethargic... surely she wasn't running out of breath this quickly?

"I promised I would make it quick. You will not suffer overlong."

"You... will die. The Dark Kingdom gasp shall reclaim the Earth." The youma opened her mouth, trying to say more. The light in her eyes dimmed, flickered, died. She glowed, turning to dust as death ravaged her system.

"I am sorry," he whispered, glowing all over in a slight emerald hue.

The dusted remains of the youma slid between his fingers.

"I am so sorry."

* * *

**-#-**

I killed it. A creature, youma, demon, call it what you will.

Did it have dreams, aspirations, hopes? Did it wish for its life, to be hunted and killed? Did it want to be left alone?

I make no claims to killing the poor thing for moralistic rights, or from some need to protect those who lived nearby. This beast had done nothing more than kill a couple of farm animals, and drain non-fatal amounts of energy from some people. I am ashamed to admit, I killed it for its energy.

I am constantly drawing on the elemental powers of the world to energise myself. But it is a slow, very slow process. If I am to one day take on Serenity, I must increase my energy reserves at a far quicker pace. One of the few ways I can do that is to drain the mana and life force of... the unnatural creatures. The youma, the daemons, the cardians, the Senshi.  
the creatures with unnaturally high life force and magical reserves. From them, I can gain power.

I am not proud of what I do. I am, to all intents, a vampire. A leech. I have sent many a monster to hell, all for a few precious jolts of energy.

Sooner or later, I shall join them on their journey.

I remember reading a poem once. It went on and on, a typical bunch of flowery tripe. I have long since forgotten most of it. But this little bit I do recall:

_We live, we die,  
We wonder why.  
That is what it is To be human._

I wonder. Can I die?

- Words scrawled into the dirt of a cave where some form of beast had been lairing, 300 kilometres from the former Germany/Poland border, 2632.

**-#-**

* * *

The Dark Kingdom. 

He used the small apartment's sink to wash the remaining youma dust off his gloves. The youma had mentioned the Dark Kingdom. This was interesting. He'd thought the Kingdom to be a myth, told to him as a legend of the early days of the Senshi. Apparently, he was wrong.

Oh yes, this was very interesting.

He searched around the small apartment. It didn't amount to much, a thin and dirty futon, the small closet, a small sink. What need a youma of anything more? He shook his head at the sparsity as he opened the closet.

Nothing. Well, it made sense. The youma's work clothes were part of a glamour spell, what would the creature need with real clothes? He looked down to the floor of the closet. His eyes widened slightly.

Tossed on the closet floor, like it was garbage or something, was a fairly decent amount of yen.

"Of course. What need a youma of money either? Some small amount spent on food, and still she would have plenty left over from the pay cheque of whatever job she was at. What was she doing working, anyway?" He shrugged, knelt, and started picking up the yen bills. The previous owner had no use for them now, after all.

He sat cross-legged on the youma's futon, his eyes half-closed, his hands cupped on his lap. In his hands was a leather thong necklace, which had a small green crystal tied to it with several leather strips.

His hood was drawn back, his goggles lay by his side. The man looked young, around seventeen or so, his shoulder length, emerald coloured hair serving to soften the grim set of his face.

He fully opened his eyes, relaxing his posture. There was no white to his eyes, instead they started out light green, working to darker shades closer to the pupils. They were slightly unnerving to look at.

"Well, well, my friend," he addressed the crystal in his hands. "This city is a stinkhole of youma activity. Much more fun than the future version. I could really grow to like it here."

He cocked his head, acting as if he was listening, before he nodded. "I agree. Energy is the priority. Serenity is out there somewhere, and I need power to destroy her."

There was another long pause.

"You're right, I can't see any alternative either, to get energy. Tomorrow, we go youma hunting."

* * *

"I need a room for the night." He stared at the hotel manager. He had left his hood drawn back, but he was still wearing the goggles. He had thought about just sleeping at the youma's apartment, but he was a survivor. And survivors didn't sleep in the room of someone they had just killed, when they didn't know whether or not the dead person entertained late night guests. So, he had found the nearest hotel (actually, more of an inn) instead. 

"I'm sorry, I don't think we have any rooms avail--"

"Check again." He smiled, took his goggles off, and stared at the man.

The manager looked into the green haired man's eyes, and started to sweat. "Aheh. Of course, silly me. I forgot that the uh... Watanabes, yes, the Watanabes cancelled their reservation. Here, here." The manager handed the man a set of keys.

"You're too kind." The man smiled again, placing some money on the reception desk. "You forgot to ask for a deposit."

* * *

"Oh, I must say you look a lot better in these clothes than the ones you walked in with." 

He smiled a fake smile, ignored the implied insult to his old clothes, payed the store clerk, and left. He'd bought what he could; a loose white shirt, black trousers, and a decent but cheap pair of shoes. He had a cloth bag slung over his shoulder, in which he had put his old clothes. He wore the leather necklace around his neck, the crystal was under the shirt.

After the night in the hotel, some food for breakfast, a trip to the public baths, and now the clothes, he couldn't afford much more. He'd have to get more money soon.

He was puzzled. He'd gone to the trouble and expense of dressing like a normal person, and still people were looking at him as if he had a second head or something. For pity's sake, they were crossing the street when they made eye contact with him!

Wait. Eye contact.

He cursed, turned, and walked back to the stores. A few minutes later, he was out of the shops again, wearing a pair of cheap but effective dark glasses.

Down to 500 yen. He really needed to get more money soon.

* * *

He looked at the salon, one hand looped through his bag's handles, the other resting on his hip. 

"A salon? Why a salon?" He shook his head. He felt energy in there. Pretty powerful energy. Someone with a decent amount of Dark Kingdom power and...

"My, my." And a Senshi.

He looked around. "Ah ha." He walked around into a sidestreet until he reached an employee's entrance. He tested the door. Locked. After looking around, he shrugged and drove his fist through the door, shearing the lock off the door. He stepped inside, into an empty hallway, closing the half-destroyed door behind him.

"Death and destruction calls." And so it would be best to make sure he couldn't be indentified by witnesses. Being chased by the police would make his mission a lot harder. Well, a lot more annoying anyway.

He pulled his bag in front of him, opened it, and pulled out his cloak.

Luckily a long life had put him in the habit of wearing clothes that hid his face. "I always was most comfortable in these."

* * *

Sailor Moon shut the door, breathing hard. She'd just freed some of the salon's instructors from Jadeite's control, ruining one of his energy collection plans in the process. She'd won another battle. Luna had scooted off outside while she found this quiet place to change out of her Sailor Moon form. 

All she needed to do now was change back to Usagi, go find Naru-chan, and then they could go get some ice creams. After all, she'd just sweated off the pounds fighting the bad guys, she deserved to give herself some sort of treat...

She looked around. Satisfied that she was alone, she started to concentrate on detransforming.

"Sailor Moon?" A cloaked and hooded man stepped out of the shadows. The hood shadowed most of his face, and a set of goggles did well to mask the man's distinguishing features. "Well, this is a surprise. How nice to see you hale and hearty."

"Who... who are you?" Sailor Moon stuttered, stepping back, her hand straying towards her tiara, trying to seek comfort from having her weapon close at hand. Her heart felt like it was in her throat. Where had this guy come from?

"Just an interested party. I'm no friend of the Dark Kingdom, if that's your worry."

"What do you want?"

"Me? I'm here to help. Remember me, I'll be around." He nodded, stepped back into the shadows, and faded from sight.

* * *

**-#-**

Sailor Moon. She was the third Senshi I met. I think she was about seventeen or eighteen at the time. I had become whatever it is that I am a year before; we met in one of the increasingly frequent youma attacks. Or was it a daemon? Oni? Well, whatever. Death is not biased, it will gladly embrace you no matter what you are, and after we were through with the beast, it was certainly dead.

I wonder what Death thinks of people like me and the Senshi, the ones who have quite possibly gained immortality. I don't know. Did Death dance when Sailor Moon died, denied the long life her teammates gained?

And I wonder, do the Senshi ever think of their fallen comrade? I find that I do. She was the most paradoxical of all the Senshi. One moment, a slightly flighty and clumsy girl. The next, a calm, powerful warrior with a presence that few could match. I found myself wondering how she could be the Senshi's leader, and wondering how anyone else could think to replace her, all in the same thought. She was like that.

In a way, it is good that she died before Serenity appeared. Otherwise, we might eventually have faced each other as enemies. That would have felt wrong. Like beating a puppy dog, perhaps. She had that affect on people too.

She was too innocent for this world. Whatever the afterlife has to offer you, Moon warrior, innocent child, I hope it finds you well. Find peace in death, Sailor Moon.

I am glad that I was not the one to kill you.

- One of a series of notes attached to a threat analysis of the various Senshi and their allies, dated from the time of the rebellion that led to the founding of the Dark Moon clan. This particular analysis was labelled under THREATS - DECEASED.

**-#-**

* * *

"A strange man?" Luna looked up at her young charge. 

"Yeah, in that room where I went to change back." Usagi looked around as she and the cat walked down a sidewalk.

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. He was dressed real weird. Kinda creepy, he almost looked like some sort of vagabond. And he disappeared after saying he was here to help me."

"Sounds like another one like Tuxedo Kamen." Luna sighed. "I don't like this, where are these men coming from? What do they want?"

"Oh well. What does it matter, Luna? If this guy's not on the Dark Kingdom's side, that's all we have to worry about, right? Now come on, I'm going to go invite Naru-chan to get some ice cream and go to the arcade."

"Don't you have some homework to do?"

"Homework? After that workout? Are you kidding? I need food first. I'm a growing girl after all."

"Growing into a fat slob, you mean," the cat muttered, her ears drooped in disappointment at Usagi's cavalier attitude.

* * *

Jadeite wrinkled his nose at the musty air of the small apartment. One of his youma had not sent her daily allotment of energy to him, and even after the relative success of his salon scheme, he couldn't afford to ignore something like this. 

So he had teleported to the youma's dingy little apartment. It hadn't taken more than a few moments to realise that the pile of dust on the floor was the youma's remains. It puzzled him.

Who had killed the thing? Sailor Moon? If that was so, how did that silly little girl manage to kill his servant without causing any damage to the apartment?

He didn't know if he liked this turn of events at all.

* * *

"Just a coffee, thank you." 

He smiled at the waitress as she nodded. The smile dropped as soon as she walked off. He was back in his new clothes, sitting in a small cafe.

What a waste of time that trip to the salon had been. He had sensed the person with Dark Kingdom energy teleporting out before he'd even managed to get his second boot on. Still, seeing Sailor Moon again after so many centuries had been interesting.

He glanced down at the table, noticing a box full of paper napkins. Another smile, genuine this time, touched his lips as he reached into a pocket, drawing out a pen.

He reached for the dispenser, drawing out a few of the folded paper wipes. He tapped the pen against his lips a few times before he began to write on the napkins.

* * *

**-#-**

I'm here to help. I just told that to Sailor Moon.

And it's true, I am here to help.

I'm just not here to help the Senshi.

I am here to help the world. In the future, our choices came down to this: accept Serenity, or leave Earth. I cannot let that happen again. I will not let that happen again. Humanity deserves better than to be treated like a herd of mindless sheep, we all deserve to make our own choices, not limited by 'good' or 'evil'. We ALL have the right to decide what is right and wrong.

Serenity took away that choice. She whitewashed society. Was it any wonder that so many of the others chose to flee the Earth rather than submit?

Oh yes, I am here to help. I am here to help make sure that Crystal Tokyo is never, ever created.

And nothing: not the youma, or their leaders, or the Senshi themselves are going to stop me.

I will stop Serenity. Even... ESPECIALLY if it means her death.

I could have killed Sailor Moon, I am sure of it. She is not yet the warrior she will be. But I am not here for the Senshi, I am here for Serenity. They do not know me here, they do not know my intent. I will not kill the Senshi, for one simple reason. They will lead me to their Queen. And then... and then finally, it will end.

It will end for the better. I swear it.

**-#-**

* * *

Author Notes: As mentioned at the start, this fic was released (up to chapter 6) in 1998. It was one of the first to paint Crystal Tokyo in a bad light, and garnered some spirited debate from readers on both sides of the argument on Crystal Tokyo. I noticed that it's getting harder to find on the net, so I thought I would re-archive it here. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use.

To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with **-#- **at the start and end.

* * *

**-#-**

The Great Ice.

The end result of a devastating battle with an awesome invader. Ice blanketed the world, covering everything, everyone. It lasted for decades, centuries.

And in the ice, trapped as if in amber, were the people who had survived the last fights before the white prison engulfed us all. It is for the removal of this ice, above any other deed, that Serenity is worshiped.

Once, in a scouting foray into Crystal Tokyo, I picked up a book from one of the libraries. It was one of those anthology type things, a collection of memoirs from ordinary people about their time in the ice. There was a motto embossed onto the back cover, no doubt supposed to inspire the drones who bought it. I have the book here, in one of my retreats, as a reminder of what I truly fight against.

The book's motto goes like this 'We remember the horror of the dark times, of the Great Evil, and stand glad that with her majesty, Neo-Queen Serenity to protect us, we will never endure such as the Ice again.'

I read through the book once. All it amounted to was a lot of wailing and moaning. 'I wake at night screaming', 'Not since Hiroshima has such tragedy been felt by so many of a community', and 'I thank kami-sama, and I especially thank Neo-Queen Serenity, that I am free from that nightmarish ice.'

Unbelieveably blind idiots! They have no idea. Serenity was protecting them, their minds were shielded from the horror of being encased in ice, of the bitter cold, of not being able to move, of sensory deprivation, of wanting to scream and scream and scream...

They have no idea. To them it was just a bad dream, a nightmare to keep them awake for an hour or so at night. Their minds were nowhere near fully conscious.

Mine was. I was awake. For every single second.

People worship Serenity for breaking the ice. They think I should be grateful to her for freeing us.

Their slavish devotion has blinded them. I was there at the final fights. I may have collapsed, completely drained of energy, before the very final moments, but I was there. I saw the streets overrun with unnatural creatures, I saw friends and enemies unite against the common foe, I saw Sailor Moon die. I saw the enemy's master gloating, wreathed in flames. Flames!

The opponent, despite its vast power, had shown no ability or aptitude to wield ice. It was a creature of fire, for pity's sake! It claimed to have been born out of a sun. It makes no sense that it would use ice as its final desperate blow, as the legends that have sprung up about the final fight claim.

On the other hand, it would have made perfect sense for Serenity to do it. The Ginzuisho gave her the power, and ice is an enemy of flame. Since the enemy's master had underlings attacking throughout the world, it might have made sense to Serenity to utilise such a desperate attack. But for the enemy to do it? No, no I really don't think so. I am not quite gullible enough to believe that.

And as for her freeing me: she didn't. It took me just over three hundred years, and I drained all the energy I had absorbed during the entrapment, but I freed myself. Half an hour later, Serenity did the same thing, but for the entire world.

Life is like that sometimes, I suppose.

- Writing on a loose piece of paper that was being used as a bookmark, in a book entitled 'The Great Ice: Tales of Ordinary Survivors'. The book was in a small nuclear shelter in the remains of St Petersburg; the shelter had been converted into living quarters. Found by a scouting party from Crystal Tokyo, 2494.

**-#-**

* * *

He had the experience of centuries. The knowledge of ages. The power to equal a Senshi at her pinnacle. Well, once he regained enough energy he'd have the power of a Senshi, anyway. 

And he couldn't afford dinner, and he didn't have anywhere to sleep for the night. He looked up at the starred sky for a few minutes, before he looked down to the necklaced crystal he held in his right hand.

"This is not a bad roof. Defensible, hidden from the view of the neighbouring structures by virtue of height. Safe as I'll get until I get money, I suppose. I've slept in worse places. For that matter, I've spent decades at a time sleeping in worse places than this."

He pulled his cloak tighter, shivering at the slightly cool night air. He'd put it back on to combat the temperature. He didn't like the cold.

It was so peaceful here. Not the cardboard peace of the future city, where nothing bad happened, and peace was as normal as the air breathed in. Rather, the peace of this time's Tokyo was a settling peace, a calm that said 'Something bad could happen any second. A mugging, a murder, even perhaps a terrorist attack. But for the moment... for this moment, there is peace.'

That was a true peace. It was peace BECAUSE it was momentary, because it was at best fleeting. It was peace because peace had meaning here, instead of being a comfortable, soul-numbing fact-of-life like it was in the future.

"I suppose I should rest." He looked at the crystal again. "You'll watch over me, like always?" He did nothing for a few seconds, and then he smiled. "Thank you, my friend."

He put the crystal down, then he laid back on the roof, using his bag as a pillow. "Wake me if I am needed," he muttered to the crystal, before closing his eyes.

* * *

The youma walked down the empty street. She was another of Jadeite's long-term deployment youmas, her Earth disguise was as a police officer. The average energy generated by a crime in progress was impressive, whether it be a robbery, a domestic dispute or, best of all, a murder or one of the other crimes that generated strong emotions. Still, it was a tough job for the youma to act out a role as self-constraining as observing the law. What she really wanted was some action, a chance to do some violence, like fight against someone worth taking on, maybe that Moon girl Jadeite had been sending out 'kill on sight' orders for. 

So, being bored, the youma welcomed what she saw when she turned into the next street. A vagabond, dressed in a tattered cloak, was propping himself up against a wall. The way the vagabond was leaning over into the alley next to him lent evidence to him being a drunkard as well. The retching sounds sort of helped the youma reach that decision.

"Had a bit too much to drink, pops?" the youma asked as she stopped in front of the man. She hid her disgusted smile; in her land, if someone had been acting like this they probably would have been sacrificed to Metallia.

The drunkard swivelled around, swayed a bit, groaned, and then slurred out a strangled "Wha?"

The youma snorted in disgust. Typical drunken idiot. Still, maybe she'd get lucky and the fool would go into one of those rages that she'd seen some of the drunks do. Then, at least, she could get some decent energy from the man, anger generated so much more energy. If she claimed that whatever lethargy the vagabond experienced was from a hangover or something, she'd be home free from her human 'bosses'. It was an easy way to get some extra energy above and beyond her quota, for 'just-in-case' situations.

"Oh... Hello... hello offisher."

"I think you'll be coming with me." The youma said authoritatively. Her eyes narrowed. There was something about this situation that was wrong, her instincts nagged.

"Fair go, offisher." The vagabond rested a gloved hand on the youma's shoulder. The youma idly considered just how badly breaking the man's arm would affect her cover. "Spare a bit of change for a 900 year-old, energy-sucking, rebel-leading killer from the future?"

"What?" The youma said, understandably confused. Her eyes widened. Alcohol. That was it, there was no smell of alcohol!

The hand tightened on the youma's shoulder, as the vagabond dropped the drunken pretence and tossed the creature into the alley. The man jumped in after the Dark Kingdom resident. "-sigh- Forgive the trickery, 'offisher', and forgive me. Goodbye."

A minute later, the vagabond walked out of the alley, dusting off his gloved hands. "Too easy. Just like last time, it was far too easy. Disturbing."

* * *

**-#-**

We were proud, we were strong, we fought for what we felt was right.

We fell before the Senshi like wheat in a thresher.

We were the ones who came out of the Great Ice, who listened to Serenity's offer: purification or leave the Earth, and we were those who decided to fight for the right to freedom on our home planet.

Murderers, thieves, at least one who was insane, scum. Poets, political activists, students, normal people blessed or cursed with power. All we had to unite us was the belief that Serenity's cause was wrong.

I guess belief alone wasn't enough.

We took on false names, as a way to ensure that our families would be safe from any possible retribution, and to give us a sense of teamwork, of solidarity. Some even tattooed black, upside-down crescent moons on their foreheads, in parody of Serenity's own mark. Those who didn't take the tattoo, like me, wore headbands or armbands or something with the black moon sigil. It was a symbol of our rejection of Serenity, and symbols were important.

Onyx, Amethyst, Topaz, the list went on. We were the children of the Earth, and our chosen names reflected that.

We spent what little time we could afford on training ourselves. I spent it gathering energy; the last fights before the ice had drained me near dry, and then I had used every iota I regained over the years I was trapped to free myself. Onyx, our default leader, taught some of us the magic required to construct droids, to help in our fight. Where he had gained his knowledge, and for that matter, who and what he was, none of us knew. Like many of us, he kept his past a mystery; pasts didn't matter, we were fighting for the future.

Finally, unready as we were, we launched our attack, just as the first groups of people unwilling to accept Serenity's rule left the Earth.

Onyx took on Pluto, and they disappeared in a flash of light. Pluto reappeared some years later, Onyx didn't.

Opal gathered every bit of his power, jumped into the middle of the Senshi, and... well, he literally exploded; he shortcircuited his own powers in an attempt to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Still, it knocked Venus unconscious. Damn, I respected Opal. He was as mad as anything, but he had guts. Unfortunately, they didn't do him much good when they were splattered across the battlefield.

Garnet got knocked out by Jupiter. I believe that she was later exiled, thrown off the planet in the last transport to leave the Earth.

Serenity hadn't taken the field yet, and so I engaged Mars.

The fight went on, my friends and teammates fell one by one, sometimes knocking out a Senshi with them. I got slightly lucky, Mars was knocked out by a stray blast, I think it was from Quartz. Sadly, he was new to his power, and he did not heed his own limits. He burnt himself out, literally, in that fight.

Eventually, we were down to two, and so were they.

Then, we were down to one.

Sapphire.

Sweet Sapphire. I will get them. Sooner or later, I'll get them. Upon my soul.

- Seventh entry in a set of private journals that were kept in the library of a small house near the northern most tip of Japan, dated 2443.

**-#-**

* * *

"I consign you to the void. Take peace in its emptiness." 

He watched the youma turn to dust as it died from a combination of fatal injuries and a critical life drain. His body glowed green from the influx of energy.

The man sighed, as the glow faded. He looked around at the small apartment. It was the best place to catch them, in their homes, or in other secluded places. Less chance of interference or random factors. He sat down in the sole chair, a rickety wooden affair that could barely take his weight, let alone that of the youma who had owned it. He reached over to the small cabinet that was next to the chair, opening the drawers one by one. In the second drawer, he found a few coins.

He flicked through the small change the youma had. "I guess you only get lucky once when it comes to hoards of cash. Maybe most of these youma give their money to their leader, whoever that is. Pity, I could really do with some money."

He looked down at his necklace, before he reached down and drew the crystal out from his shirt. "Rob a bank? Don't be ridiculous."

He leaned back on the chair, ignoring the dangerous creaking from the wooden seat. "Why?" he asked the crystal, surprised.

He thought about it. "Because it wouldn't be right."

* * *

"You shouldn't slack off like this, Usagi," Luna admonished her young charge, who was lying in her bed, giggling, as she flipped through a manga. "We should be out searching for the Moon Princess." 

Usagi sighed, lowering the manga so she could look at the cat. For a small black cat, Luna certainly did a good mother impression. "Why, Luna? What's so special about this Moon Princess anyway? I mean, you just came into my life one day, said I was Sailor Moon and I was supposed to find this 'Moon Princess', but you never said why! Why am I Sailor Moon? I never wanted to be a warrior, why can't people like Sailor V do the fighting?"

"For the moment, it's best not to say." And I can't really remember why, the cat thought to herself, cursing the large gaps in her memory. "But we need to find the Moon Princess, to protect her. Without her, the evil of the Dark Kingdom will certainly win out. Right now, you're all we've got, and until we find the other Senshi, you're the princess' only help." Luna sighed inwardly at that thought. Why couldn't the girl show a bit more motivation?

* * *

Jadeite let the dusted remains of the youma sift through his fingers. He looked at the scorch marks on one of the surrounding walls of the small shop. At least this one had managed to get off a blast before she died, for whatever good that did her. 

The youma general resisted a small urge to sigh. Another one of his long-term operatives dead, with no evidence on who did it. That made the seventh in five days.

There was no way that this was the work of Sailor Moon. That child couldn't possibly be able to find his youma this quickly, let alone dispatch them with so little damage to the surroundings. His pride refused to accept that.

He briefly contemplated telling Queen Beryl. No, no he wasn't quite that stupid. She was already overreacting over Sailor Moon, making it plain that she wouldn't take hearing about another youma killer without some sort of proof. She'd just think he was making excuses, and when Beryl started thinking that... He clenched his dust covered fist.

Keeping secrets from Beryl was a recipe for 'demotion'. There was only one thing to do, try and get rid of this second trouble-maker before she or he came to Beryl's attention.

* * *

"Stop fooling around, Sailor Moon!" Luna shouted from the sidelines as Sailor Moon desperately dodged the attacks of an angry youma. 

"What... do... you think... I'm doing... out here?!" Sailor Moon wailed in between her clumsy (but effective) dodging. There were no bystanders in the park, luckily the lateness of the hour had made sure that only the combatants were around.

"I always wondered who taught Moon how to dodge like that." the cloaked man noted as he stepped out of the shadows behind Luna.

Luna scurried back a little, her muscles bunched to jump away if the man attacked.

"Hello, little talking cat. Don't worry, my fine feline friend, I told Moon I was here to help, and I did not lie."

Luna's eyes narrowed, her gaze exuding suspicion. This must be the man Usagi had told her about. He obviously knew she wasn't a normal cat, no point in faking stupidity. "If you're here to help, why haven't you attacked that youma yet? Or don't you have any power?"

"Of course I could intervene. But look at her."

The cat and the man looked over at Sailor Moon, who was running away from the youma, screaming at the top of her lungs.

"There, you see? She's still learning how to fight. If I stepped in, she might start relying on me to bail her out. Then, when I'm not there, she could get killed." And then would I be able to find the Neo-Queen, if the Senshi's leader is dead before the last battle? Best not to risk it, the Senshi are the ticket to my life's goal.

"What she needs right now is support, not for other people to butt into her battles. If she's really in trouble, I'll help, but otherwise, relax. As long as someone's giving her moral support, something along the lines of--" A rose thudded in front of the charging youma, startling her into stopping.

"Don't fear this monster, Sailor Moon!" Tuxedo Kamen urged from a nearby lamppost. "Look within yourself, you have the courage and power to defeat it." Having said his bit, he flew off into the shadows.

"Yes, yes something like that," the cloaked man agreed as Sailor Moon took the words to heart and used her tiara to kill the creature. "Huh, knew she wouldn't need help."

"You were right this time." Luna noted as Sailor Moon went through a victory pose. "But what happens when you're wrong?"

"Then I'll be wrong. Don't worry, the Grim Spectre is not quite ready to add Moon to His realm yet." He stared at the youma dust pile, sighed, and muttered "What a waste."

"Just who are you, anyway?"

"Yeah, I'd like to know that myself," Sailor Moon added as she walked over to the pair. "Why did you just sit there like that? Didn't you see me getting chased? Why didn't you help me!?" Tears started to shimmer in her eyes.

"I was confident in your abilities, Sailor Moon. As for me, I'm nobody important. I'm just searching for someone, a queen, in fact. Once I find her, a lot of the world's troubles will be over."

"A queen?" Sailor Moon, pondered this for a few seconds as Luna tried to make 'careful of what you say, we cannot trust him yet' paw signals in the background. "Gee, I wonder if she's got anything to do with this Moon Princess you keep going on about, Luna."

Luna sighed, hanging her head. So much for paw signals.

"A princess?" the man hummed, before he smiled, his mouth stretching into a full grin. "Well, every queen was a princess once." He resisted the urge to dance. This 'Moon Princess' almost certainly had to be Serenity. It was all going to work out, Sailor Moon would eventually lead him right to her. For once, life was good.

* * *

**-#-**

It's peaceful here, my love. I think you would have liked your resting place; nature always was your element. That is why I scattered your dusted remains here, long ago.

Despite the time we had together, you never told me exactly what you were. Some sort of half-youma, or a gentle oni, or a human with lycanthrope-like abilities. It didn't matter to me, you were you, and that was all that mattered.

Do you remember, during the rebellion, just before we launched the attack, how we promised each other we wouldn't die in the fighting? How we'd have a drink afterwards?

Just another broken promise, snapped by Uranus and Neptune. Their combined attacks ripped you away from me forever.

No last words, never getting to say goodbye, just time to share a last pain-filled glance, saying as much with the eyes as we could... and then you were gone.

It was the mindset of the Senshi, the warrior morals that allowed them to kill 'monsters' without remorse. To them, you were just another soulless droid, like the others we had created for the battle. Kill or be killed, it was war after all. I understand. I cannot forgive.

I can never forget, never forgive those who killed you. I would have got them then and there, they were weakened by the battle. But then Serenity joined in, and I lost the chance for vengeance, possibly forever.

I find it so hard to remember some things. My school years, my sister's face, bits and pieces of my life fall by the wayside as time goes on. I have forgotten so much. But no matter how long I live, no matter what happens, I will never forget you.

I miss you, Sapphire.

I miss you.

- Contents of a note, left with a bouquet of wilted flowers on the outskirts of Crystal Tokyo, at a grassed plain that was once a cemetery, 2771.

**-#-**

* * *

He leaned back on the park bench, staring at the night sky. He was back in the current time's clothes, his bag lay next to him. His necklace was on top of his shirt, and he was talking to the crystal. 

"She was so trusting, my friend. Oh, she might have been annoyed that I didn't help her in her fight, but she never seemed to think I was actually an enemy."

He cocked his head. A few seconds passed, and then he said "Why didn't I stick around longer? Expedience, my friend, expedience. The longer I stayed talking to them, the more chance I might have slipped out something... incriminating. Best to keep it to short talks, swaggering heroic rescues, those sort of things which will leave a good impression of me to them."

He looked at the gibbous moon for a while. "Moon Princess, eh? You don't think that all those legends that sprung up after the rebellion were true, do you?"

He paused. "No, no you're right. Reincarnated warriors who once lived on a hunk of airless rock. Huh, I remember how angry that made me when I first heard it. As if 'being a princess in a past life' is a legitimate or good 'reason' to take over the world."

He hooked his hands behind his head, using them as support. He blinked, and then looked down at the crystal. "How long do I think it will take to find Serenity? As long as it takes, my friend. As long as it takes. It's not as if we've got anything else to wait for."

He could do many things to change history, if he wished it. He could gather a bit more energy, and then go destroy landmarks, like the Tokyo Tower. He could kill off people like the Senshi, or ensure that important historical events, such as peace signings, didn't happen. But there was no point: there were no guarantees that anything he did would give him the future he longed for, except for destroying Serenity herself. She was the linchpin, the nexus, the critical turning point. Everything else was secondary, Crystal Tokyo might still survive unless he got rid of its creator.

A few more appearances around Moon's battles, maybe actually helping her out on a few of the fights to show her he wasn't just a big-talking weakling, and she should be convinced of his 'sincerity'. The other Senshi obviously hadn't joined yet, Moon and her cat needed every ally they could get.

He'd be all too glad to help out.

* * *

"I don't think we should trust this man too much." Luna muttered, sitting down on Usagi's bed. "We know nothing about him, and he just stood by and did nothing while you were in danger. There's just something about him that worries me. I think you should be careful around him, until we're sure he's on our side. Giving away any of our secrets to him could be dangerous." 

"Maybe we shouldn't trust him until he learns the secret handshake." Usagi replied, flopping down onto her bed. "So he's no Tuxedo Kamen. If he wanted to do something to hurt us, he could have ambushed me back at the salon, or he could have helped the youma today. I think you don't like him because he's just like you, someone who thinks they know what's best."

Luna sniffed. "He's nothing like me. And I do know what's best, thank you very much." She sighed. "Just don't tell him anything until we're sure about him, alright?"

"Okay, okay." Usagi groaned.

* * *

He looked through the small refrigerator that was in the apartment of his latest kill. 

"I suppose it's too much to find milk or cheese or something RECOGNISABLE in here." he muttered. "What is this stuff?"

He blinked. "I guess you're right. It'd have to be food from this Dark Kingdom place." He reached in, and pulled out... something. "This sort of looks like a demon I killed once. Only, this thing is uglier."

He looked at the food for a few minutes, weighing his hunger. He blinked, and then glared at his chest, where the crystal rested under his clothes. "Easy for you to say, you don't have to eat it." he muttered.

He hesitated for another minute, before he shrugged. "Oh well." He took a bite, chewed a few times, and swallowed. "Disgusting." he noted, before taking another bite.

"I'm not sure I like the amount of youma we've been finding." he said conversationally in between bites. "This Dark Kingdom must be very close to something big, invasion or something, to have this amount of youma cannon fodder running around."

He grinned. "True, true. The more of them, the more for us. The way this is going, I'll be at powers way beyond the young Senshi within another week or two."

* * *

He walked through the cram school, his cloak ruffling around him. He'd detected the youma's energy on one of his walks through the city, and so he'd found a secluded place, changed out of his 'civilian clothes' and teleported into the building. 

He could feel the aura of a Senshi. There was no doubt who that was, Moon seemed to still be the only active Senshi around, unless that V girl over in Europe was one too.

He smiled. It was time to do something suitably heroic to make sure that he was on Moon's good side. Posture a bit, mouth off a couple of rousing speeches, the sort of thing he vaguely remembered the Senshi doing a lot during this time period. He heard loud noises coming out of one of the rooms he was heading towards; explosions, a couple of screams, shouting...

His smile widened. Sounded like a typical Sailor Moon fight from this part of her career, if the couple of fights he'd spied on so far were any indication. He reached for the door as he prepared his energy for a fight.

He blinked. Wait. There was a second Senshi in there...

"Shabon Spray!"

His face paled. "Mercury," he breathed, in barely a whisper. He backed away, edging into the shadows of the wall, and teleported away.

* * *

**-#-**

She nearly got me yesterday. I was fighting off Jupiter, and then I saw her running towards me, her power gathering in her hands. I froze, somewhat ironically. Luckily, self-preservation kicked in, I dodged her attack, and I managed to escape.

Sailor Mercury. The second Senshi I encountered, just after my less than joyous meeting with Mars.

I fear her.

I don't fear Jupiter or Mars, and they've both put a lot more power and passion into trying to take me down. I don't fear Venus, and she's come the closest to finishing me off. I don't even fear Serenity, and I know what she could do with the power she commands.

And yet, I fear Mercury. There are two reasons. Firstly, I have always found her intelligence, her analytical mind to be offputting. Mercury is deceptive. She is the quiet before the storm. The problem is, she is also the storm. Just when you think she's a timid little flower with no guts, you see her stand fearlessly before an entire squad of droids as she releases one of her attacks.

Her power, will, and intelligence make her deceptive, and that is something to be careful of.

The second reason? Ice. She attacks with ice.

- Found, along with a bunch of related files, on a derelict computer system in the ruins of a town in SouthWest China, 2595. The files were difficult to recover, perhaps the owner of the system thought them to be irretrievable and therefore safe.

**-#-**

* * *

The youma walked into her apartment. There was something wrong in here. Her danger senses weren't screaming, but they were whispering, and that was enough. 

"Take peace with your goddess, or demoness, or whatever you wish to call her." The cloaked man stepped out of the small toilet room.

The youma grinned. "So, you're this youma killer I've heard about?"

"A youma killer, yes. Nothing personal, just need your energy. If there was another way, I would take it."

"Don't worry about it. There's nothing personal about--" The youma shed her glamour, and rammed her right arm(which ended in a blade- like point) through the man's side, "THIS either. Did you really think you'd get away with this forever? You did a fine job of killing off the energy gatherers, but that's no fine accomplishment. All we had to do was replace them with warriors like me, and your death was inevitable." She twisted her arm a little, not wanting to end it for the man before he'd received a measure of pain equal to all the deaths he had caused.

"You know..." the man gasped through gritted teeth. "That really hurts."

"Oh? Oh, I'm so sorry. Nothing personal, just need your head, for my general, Jadeite."

The man smiled. "Information." he noted, as he started to glow. He brought his right fist down, shearing through the appendage in his left side. The youma screamed, and the man paled from his act, which had forced the shorn-off appendage to cut through more of his side. "Information..." he repeated as he pulled the limb out, ignoring the blood for the moment, "is, like knowledge, power. Thanks for the power."

His hand glowed. "You're worth spending energy on. Take that to the grave as a compliment, my large, dangerous friend." He pointed his hand at the youma, who had recovered from the pain and was about to bring her other limb up to attack. The cloaked man's hand burst with green energy, which lanced into, and then through the youma. The youma had time for a half-strangled scream, before she collapsed into dust.

"So, the farmers have been replaced with warriors." He smiled, clutching at his bleeding side. "Good, good. I was beginning to worry about how easy this was."

* * *

He staggered out of the apartment block, his right hand clutched around his left side. 

"An ambush." He noted calmly. "You have to respect a good ambush. That was almost a good one."

He pulled his hand away, and looked at it. It was covered in sticky red blood. Almost red blood, anyway, the liquid was full of small glowing motes of green... something. Energy, perhaps.

"Wonder if I should get a blood transfusion." He mused, before laughing.

He cut off his laughter. "Don't worry, my friend. It will take a bit more than a second-rate ambush to finish me off."

He smiled, returning his bloody hand to his side.

"Ah me, ah my. This calls for a bit of petty revenge against this 'Jadeite' fellow. Trying to kill me by proxy hardly seems fair."

* * *

**-#-**

Can I die?

I remember a quote... it's on the tip of my tongue... it was something about death. Wait, I remember. Something along the lines of life being a disease with a 100 casualty rate. Or something like that.

I guess I've developed an immunity to life, then.

I'm not aging. I've been in dozens of fights that would have killed off a normal person. I'm just NOT dying.

Will I live forever, outlasting the Earth itself, to float in the vacuum amongst the stars?

No. No, I take comfort that I shall eventually find the peace of eternal rest. After all, one day even the stars will die.

- Tenth entry in a set of private journals that were kept in the library of a small house near the northern most tip of Japan, dated 2443.

**-#-**

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use. 

To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with at the start and end.

* * *

**-#-**

'Her Majesty, Neo-Queen Serenity, ruler of Crystal Tokyo, and all she surveys'.

I think I may become nauseous.

When I was young, politics meant nothing to me. What would I care, as long as I could do what I want? It was a pretty typical attitude of the time.

But as the Great Ice receded, as I lay there, shivering, gathering my shattered strength, I saw Serenity rise above the ruined city on 'angels' wings. I saw the nearby survivors gazing at her, crying out in awe. I saw some kneel and grovel, and I felt the bile rise in my throat.

Sailor Moon. Sailors Procyon, Formalhaut, and Terra. The ten members of The Rising Stars, drawn from such diverse countries as Pakistan, Indonesia, Spain and China. The five member Brazilian team whose name I have regrettably forgotten. Every member of the Australian team, The Southern Cross, except for Opal. The Italian girl who liked to dress like Zorro. That Englishman who used a rapier. And at least twenty other people with power, one of whom sacrificed herself, just so that I could continue to fight. And, of course, the ordinary people. Soldiers, salarymen, husbands, wives... normal people.

All of them dead, in the last fight to protect the Earth. My friends, my sister, dead.

And after all that, there, being worshipped like a deity, was Serenity.

It was sickening, to see all the sacrifice forgotten for just one person.

Never before had I been so angry as at that moment. It was then that the plan to 'purify' the people and to make Crystal Tokyo was announced, as people proclaimed Serenity as their queen.

All of a sudden, I couldn't not care about politics anymore. Within an hour, I had found others who would not submit to Serenity. Within a day, we had joined up with other groups, including Sapphire's. Within a week, the rebellion was nearing full force.

And within a month, the rebellion was over. But not for me.

Never for me.

- Entry in a small, half-burnt diary, which had been left in the ruins of Osaka. Dated, with an accuracy surprising for the time, 2373

**-#-**

* * *

The man idly snatched a newspaper that was half hanging out of a covered rubbish bin. He settled the bag containing his cloak and other 'future' clothes higher up on his shoulder, before opening the paper. He slightly favoured one side, the only indication his accelerated healing had left of his wound, besides a hastily repaired patch on the cloak in his bag. It had taken just under a week of solitude, and a decent amount of energy, but he was back to full health. 

"I don't suppose you remember which horses won at the track in the next couple of weeks? Just imagine the bets we could make..." he said to the crystal hidden underneath his shirt. After a small pause, he harumphed, and smiled. "No? Are you any good at pachinko then? Cards? I'm sure we could find a blackmarket game somewhere. No? Then what use are you, anyway?" The man grinned, turning his attention back to the news.

He scanned the paper, ignoring almost everything as pointless trivia, although some articles did give him faint twinges of nostalgia. He grunted when he reached one article. "'Buses disappear near temple', eh? And three Senshi sighted. My, up to three already. Looks like the Senshi are still in the 'new urban myth' state, my friend. All they rate is a couple of lines in the 'odd happenings' section. Buried underneath all the other 'important' news. Ah well, the world shall have to take notice soon enough. At least for now, people still have their blinkered innocence."

He closed the paper, and was about to toss it back into the bin, when he noticed the date. He blinked, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at the inked page. "Something..." he muttered, looking around. He found what he was looking for, a digital clock set in a store's display, and frowned. "Two hours... Two hours to..." he shook his head, and tossed the paper into the bin, striding for the nearest place away from the public view.

* * *

He stepped out of the shadows of a tree in a small park that was set in one of the districts of Osaka. The man looked around as he kept to the shadows. 

"What is it about this place, this time that I still remember it after so long?"

He concentrated, searching his memories, before he sighed. "I can't remember. Was there some sort of accident here? A youma attack? Did someone I know die here?"

He clenched his fists. "Damn my mind, I hate not knowing! For me to remember a time and place after so long, this had to be important."

He waited, leaning against the tree, watching the people who walked on the nearby paths, as the time passed. Sometimes, he spared a minute or two to looking at the younger people who played on the play equipment, and on the grassed areas, but soon his gaze would start to wander again.

His eyes roved the area, constantly searching for danger. His eyes stopped wandering when he spotted a boy of about fourteen or fifteen years. The boy, who had short black hair, was dressed in one of the local school uniforms, and was currently smiling nervously, was walking towards an empty park bench that was sheltered by some well-kept bushes. "Gods," the man breathed as he caught a glimpse of the boy's light brown eyes. "Was I ever that young?"

He pushed away from the tree, his eyes never leaving the boy. His right arm reached up, ready to catch the boy's attention. "I could tell him, my friend. About you, about me, about what's going to happen. We could warn him, set him down another path. He doesn't have to turn into me."

He sighed, shook his head, and lowered his arm. "No, you're right. If not me, then whom? There is no-one else to stop the madness of Serenity. I cannot afford such selfishness." He leaned back against the tree again, his eyes once more searching for the expected danger, although his gaze constantly wandered back to the younger version of himself, who was sitting on the bench, apparently waiting for someone.

The man blinked when a small, black-haired girl, the same age as his younger self, and dressed in a school dress, walked over to the park bench, and sat down next to the boy. The two teenagers talked, and then, nervously, held hands, relying on the bushes to hide them from the public's view while still getting the thrill of such a public display.

The man watched, as the couple kept talking, until the girl placed a finger on the boy's lips. She looked around for anyone watching, completely missing the one spy, before she turned back to the boy, removed her finger, and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then, she smiled, said something to the shocked boy, and ran off, giggling.

The boy sat there, blinking, for a few moments before he shook himself out of his coma and ran after the girl.

The man blinked, watching the dwindling figure of the boy. "Not an attack," he whispered. "Not a death or a horrible wrong. So much I have forgotten, so much I wished I could forget. And yet, after over nine hundred years, I still remember the time and place of my first kiss."

He clutched his arms together, and bowed his head, shutting his eyes. "No, my friend." he whispered to his crystal. "No, I am not alright."

He shivered slightly, before clutching his arms tighter to his body. "I haven't been alright for a long, long time."

* * *

**-#-**

The rebellion was over. My fellow rebels were either dead, exiled to space, or, like Onyx, simply gone. Exile seemed to be my destiny too, after my defeat at the final battle.

But I was too angry to let myself be exiled from my planet, after all that had happened.

To think that at the mockery that was my 'trial'(more a public audience with the 'Neo-queen'), they dared to act like exile was awe-inspiringly merciful.

If being thrown off the planet that had born, raised, and supported you, if being thrown off the planet that you fought time and time again to save and protect, if being thrown off the planet that people died, DIED to help you protect, if being thrown off your home planet, the planet you love is MERCY, then by the GODS, never, EVER show any mercy to me AGAIN!

There's no mercy in planetary exile, none at all. To rip something as precious as one's home from you is, as vulgar as the analogy is, like rape of the soul.

It's the sort of thing I've come to expect from Serenity.

Exile? I wasn't going to accept that. And so I escaped.

It wasn't easy to do so. But their mistake was in thinking that if I was drained of energy and away from my crystal, that I couldn't do anything. They obviously didn't know what the crystal truly was. If they had, they would have put more guards on it than they did on me.

Such a pity that, for them, no?

- Part of a set of journal entries kept in a small house in Western Europe. Dated from the late 2400s/early 2500s, the journals were severely age-damaged when found in 2761.

**-#-**

* * *

The man knelt in an empty part of a cemetery, and stared at the well-grassed ground. 

"Mother. Father. Sister." He bowed his head, and sighed. "I know, I know. None of you are dead yet, not in this time. But I don't think I could face you all, alive and breathing. Not after so long. I can barely face you all like this."

He slowly took off his sunglasses, placing them in his shirt's pocket. "That was one of the few advantages of my long life. Not having to face you all in the afterlife, of seeing the shame in your eyes..."

The man rested his hands on the grass. "We all do what we feel we must. And I must do this, I must kill Serenity, I must ensure Crystal Tokyo is never built. I must stop her. But that doesn't mean I don't have regrets."

The man bowed his head. "Momma, Poppa, Sis. I'm sorry."

* * *

The cloaked man leaned on the building's edge, looking down at the three Senshi, Moon, Mercury, and Mars, who were facing a youma and Jadeite. 

"Oh look, there's Mr Swank." he noted as Tuxedo Kamen made his entrance. He sighed when he saw Sailor Moon's lovelorn gaze. "Gods, girl, you were infatuated with him this early? It's sad, really, to see such puppy dog devotion to a man like that. Huh, it didn't take Endymion long after her death to get all cosy with Serenity."

He paused, and then glared down at his crystal. "Those centuries in the ice don't count in this!" He looked back up, and winced. "Looks like this Jadeite man has some sort of personal grudge against Endymion, from the way they're fighting." He shrugged as the Dark Kingdom general and the tuxedoed fighter slightly drew away from the main battlefield. He owed Jadeite some pain for that youma's ambush a while back, but it wasn't overly important to him who gave that pain.

The Senshi on the other hand... He looked back to them, and growled when he saw the girls being blasted around by the youma.

"Ah... curse it! They're fighting like amateurs! Without them, I may not find Serenity until the Ice. I'll have to help, just in case something goes wrong." He stood, brought his right hand up, and threw a small beam of green energy into the ground, right before the youma. Everyone, including Jadeite and Tuxedo Kamen, looked up at him.

"Evil agents of a cursed realm, cease your destructive ways immediately." The man paused for a moment, trying to think up more things to say, before inspiration struck. "Sailor Moon, I told you I would be here to help! But as long as you are confident in your own abilities, your own inner strength, and the strength shared with you by your comrades, you are the only help you will ever need!"

The man winced, and whispered to his crystal "Gods, what a bunch of stupid rubbish. Perhaps I should tell them to 'believe in the spirit of love' or that 'good always triumphs over evil' while I'm at it. Still, what do you think? All I need is some snappy clothes and a frontal lobotomy, and I could be Endymion."

He raised an energy shield as the youma fired an attack at him. Flashy, energy draining, and probably unnecessary, true. He could have dodged, but would that have impressed the Senshi anywhere near as much? Probably not.

"Come on girls." he whispered. "Big, bad youma paying all her attention to poor little me. Perfect opportunity to--"

Sailor Mercury blanketed the area with fog, blinding the youma for Sailor Mars' follow up, her fire attack.

"Ah yes," the man whispered, dropping the energy shield. He couldn't see through the fog, not normally anyway. But his energy senses could penetrate the murk, he could see the energy trail of Mars' attack, see the auras of the Senshi, the youma, and Kamen. Jadeite had retreated, by the looks of it. "Now, as always when she was alive..."

Sailor Moon threw her glowing tiara, disintegrating the youma.

"Huh, and they thought they had moral grounds to call me a killer? Still, the seeds of the future are there. The fight is in their blood. I suppose that, at least, you have to respect, if nothing else."

* * *

Sailor Mars watched the man in the tattered cloak jump down in front of Sailor Moon. Her eyes narrowed. This wasn't right, normally when she saw someone, she got at least some vague sense off of them, some indication of their nature, or their life. And when she didn't it didn't feel like what she saw when she looked at this man. Instead of seeing nothing, it was like she was looking at a... well, some sort of a null-spot. Like he should be generating a huge aura, but he was somehow masking it. 

And what reason did he have to mask his aura, if he was a friend? For that matter, how could he hide his aura like that?

She saw Sailor Mercury using her computer to scan the man, hiding her motions behind Sailor Moon as she did so. Mars smiled, at least Mercury had enough sense not to trust some stranger.

The man said something to Sailor Moon, glanced at Sailor Mercury, and then spared a look at Sailor Mars. He grinned as he looked at her, and then turned back to Moon, saying some sort of goodbye.

The man walked back towards the building he had jumped down from, tensing his muscles, ready to leap.

"Wait!" Sailor Mars cried out in an authoritative voice. "Who are you?"

The man paused, and relaxed his tensed muscles. He turned back to the Senshi, cocked his head for a moment, and then said curiously "Tell me, do you believe that you are reincarnated warriors from a Moon Kingdom?"

The Senshi gasped.

"How... how did..." Sailor Moon stuttered. She closed her mouth, and looked at the other girls.

"Please, just give me an honest answer." The man said. "Do you believe that?"

"Yes." Sailor Mars admitted. "I suppose we do. Why?"

The man was silent for a few seconds. Then, he reached up, drew back his hood, and took down his goggles so that they hung around his neck. He ran his left hand through his green hair, before he looked at Sailor Mars.

The girls blinked, all of them except for Sailor Mars was slightly blushing. Hiding underneath those rags was someone who looked like this!? Sure, he looked a bit serious, but besides that, he was quite handsome.

"Mars," he said quietly, softly. She looked into his strange eyes, and blinked. "Rei-chan." The girls gasped when he said her name, and Mars paled. "Don't you remember? Back in the..." he paused, desperately searching his memory for the right name. He stepped forward and took Mars's hand to cover his pause; she was too shocked at his using her real name to protest. "...in the Silver Millennium, you and I... don't you remember? We were lovers."

What little blood that hadn't already drained from Mar's face escaped, leaving her as pale as a sheet. Then, all the blood rushed back, as she blushed beet-red.

"I see, it's too much, too soon." the man noted, letting go of her hand. "I shall go, and see you another day. Goodbye, Rei-chan." He turned, ran five steps, and leaped to the top of the nearest building, leaving two Senshi staring at their third member.

* * *

**-#-**

Sailor Mars. Through one of those vagaries of chance, I know her true first name: Rei. I always make it a point to call her that, it annoys her no end when we're trying to kill each other. She usually retaliates in kind; when you've fought someone as long and often as we two have, you tend to learn each other's 'buttons to press', so to speak. We try to press them all, every time we meet.

She was the first Senshi I ever encountered. I was fighting some strange birdlike monster, and I was losing. It was only my second fight, I was inexperienced in combat. Mars pulled me out of a tight situation.

She never let me forget it too.

We get on like a house on fire. Screaming, casualties, lots of damage to be cleaned up afterwards.

We never really did like each other much, and once it was clear that we were on opposite sides during the rebellion, we moved on to hostile enmity. And then, when she discovered the hate I had developed for Serenity, things turned... bitter.

Over the years, I have developed... an immunity, shall we say, to her mystic senses. Well, not truly an immunity, more that I have trained my power to mask myself from her scrying powers. She cannot find me through her fire, or detect me in a crowd by aura alone. Of course, she developed the same abilities with regards to my aura detection abilities: she was never one to be outdone.

We've fought a fair amount of times over the centuries. Every time I make a scouting mission to Crystal Tokyo, in order to try and spot weaknesses in Serenity's power, she always finds me somehow, and then we always fight. It's almost a game between us.

One day, one of us will slip up, and it will be game over. I can only hope that it will be her that falls.

- Recording of a monologue at a small eatery in Crystal Tokyo, 2756. Four minutes later, Mars entered the establishment. This recording was found in the ruins of the eatery during the later cleanup.

**-#-**

* * *

He couldn't stop laughing. He sat in the shadows of a building's roof, letting the humour wash over him. "The... the look on her face!" he gasped, between chortles. "Oh mercy, I haven't laughed like this in centuries! Hahaa! Let's see her find a way to get even for this one!" 

He pulled the crystal up to his face, composed his face into quiet seriousness, and calmly said "Oh, Rei-chan."

His serious facade crumbled, as he shook from trying to contain the laughter. Finally, he gave up, and went back to laughing.

* * *

"Would you two be quiet!? I'm TELLING you, I've never seen that guy before in my life! I've got some wacko with weird eyes out there who knows who I am, and all you two can do is swoon!?" Rei crossed her arms, furious, still blushing. After the battle, the other two Senshi had followed her back to the temple. Luna had been waiting for them there, and Usagi had been all too glad to tell the lunar cat all about 'Rei and her lover'. 

After that, Usagi and, somewhat surprisingly, Ami had proceeded to pelt Rei with questions about the man, some of which had made the temple maiden want to wring her teammates' necks. Luna just resisted the urge to sigh at their arguing; everyone except Rei seemed more concerned about this 'lover' statement of the man's, rather than the fact that he knew who one of the Senshi was.

"Don't be so mean to me Rei!" Usagi wailed a second or two after Rei's outburst.

Ami cleared her throat. "He did know who you were. And remember, he did say it was back in the Silver Millennium. I know I can't remember much at all about that time. Practically nothing, in fact. Is it hard to believe that you can't remember your..." she blushed, "friend from back then?"

"What about him knowing my name then? Don't tell me I had the same name back then too! And how can he remember, if I can't!? What about you, Luna, do you remember this guy from back then?"

The cat sweated. It was hard to play the wise advisor when you really couldn't know half the things you were supposed to, thanks to a shot memory. She didn't remember the man, but that certainly didn't mean anything. "Ahem, I couldn't tell you. He was wearing a hood the times I saw him. Perhaps if I could see his face, I would be able to tell you."

"Maybe he just got lucky, and remembered more than us," said a recovered Usagi. "And then, maybe he remembered his lost love, torn from him by the cruel hands of time. And so he searched, and finally found her, working as a simple..."

"Hey!"

"...temple girl. He starts to approach her, but no! First, she whisks away to fight, and he follows, ready to defend her from harm, finally doing that duty tonight." Usagi gasped from her long supposition.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Odango-atama!"

"Actually..." Ami interposed quietly, "it sort of makes sense. It's one way it could have happened, anyway. If he did remember you from this Moon Kingdom, he might have just found out your name by finding you. And that may have been why he met Usagi those times she told us about, so that he could be sure he was on the right path."

"Doesn't it worry you how easily this man penetrated your disguises, if he could track down Rei like this?" Luna asked. "There's something not quite right about this man. Be careful around him, especially you, Rei."

"Hush, Luna, it's obvious that Rei and this guy were meant for each other. It's true love, drawing a couple together." Usagi sighed, as Rei's face started to turn purple. "Sort of like me and Tuxedo Kamen."

* * *

The man watched as a gigantic illusion of Jadeite appeared over the city, challenging the Senshi to a fight at Narita airport. "Gods. That has to be the stupidest waste of mystical energy I've seen in centuries."

* * *

He watched from the shadows of a runway, his cloak merging him with the darkness, as the three Senshi girls ran away from telekinetically controlled planes. "My mistake, this is the stupidest waste of mystical energy I've seen in centuries." 

The man shook his head. "That man has absolutely no appreciation of energy conservation," he muttered. "The fool must be either stupid, glutted on energy, or only capable of fine control on gigantic objects. Otherwise, he would have had the sense to animate a couple of trucks or cars or something. Faster, more likely to hit, several, several tonnes less of vehicle to push around..."

He shook his head, watching. "Oh look, how cute. Endymion's playing hero." The man watched Jadeite apparently take out Tuxedo Kamen, and groaned when the general insulted the Senshi. "This isn't worth my time. The man's a fool, even this young the Senshi should not be pushed so lightly. The girls will tear him apart."

He turned, and walked away from the fight. "Huh, to see all that energy being wasted in such an unbelievably crass display of macho desperation. It's enough to make me want to cry. I need to get away from this foolishness for a while."

* * *

He rubbed his chin as he walked out of the airport. "You know," he said to his crystal, "I must have months, maybe a couple of years before Serenity appears. There is so much here I could see again... Two weeks away couldn't hurt, could it?" 

He stopped rubbing. "You're no help. Fine, five days. Even someone like me needs a break, once in a while. I haven't had a holiday in twenty years."

* * *

Two days later, in a small village in northern Scotland, a green-haired man approached the mayor, and, in slightly accented but otherwise perfect English, said "I heard from the papers that you have a werewolf terrorising this place. I can bet no-one believed you, no-one took you seriously." 

"I believe you. I take you seriously. And I'm here to help you."

* * *

The man calmly tossed the newspaper back into the bin he had taken it from, back in Japan from his working holiday. "And old Zap-happy makes four. From vague memory, Venus should be the next one to be found, now that Jupiter's here. How curious that the media are starting to take serious notice of the Senshi." 

He resettled the clothes bag on his shoulder, and looked down at the lump under his shirt that was the crystal. "I don't know exactly when Serenity comes. But my guess is that it will be within a year or two. Still, even with all that time, I have to find more energy, just to be sure of it. My holiday was very... energising, but I need more. A lot more to be sure."

He sighed. "Looks like that Jadeite fellow's gone the way of dust. Perhaps the Senshi killed him at that farce of a fight at Narita airport. Still, with him went replacements for his operatives. This place is relatively youma free at the moment. I'm probably the only one in the city who finds that even slightly disappointing. Means I have to find alternative... energy sources."

The man hissed, his head whipping around to his right, his eyes widening under his sunglasses. "What in...?"

His gaze settled on two teenage girls, a blonde with hair gathered into two long ponytails, tied into balls on the top of her head, and a brunette with wavy, just beyond shoulder-length hair.

The blonde had an interesting energy, with an undeniably impressive, and vaguely familiar aura. But it was the other one that had screamed to his energy senses. No normal human could possibly have that much energy within her.

He took a step towards the two girls as they walked past on the other side of the road. He hesitated, started to take another step, and then stopped, his face set in a grimace.

He couldn't...

He cursed his weakness. She was a mystic battery, for pity's sake! Her power was rolling off her, the girl's energy was almost swimming around her! Draining her would be as good... BETTER than draining thirty youma!

He clenched his fists. No. Not unless he had to. Not because she was human and not a youma, he had long since cast off such ridiculously speciesist ideas. No, it was because she looked so innocent.

And gods help him, he couldn't destroy an innocent. Not unless he had to. He just couldn't help but feel like a hypocrite.

He looked at the brown haired girl, overhearing the blonde call her 'Naru-chan'. "So beautiful," he sighed, as the two girls walked off, his eyes firmly fixed on her aura, not her physical form.

* * *

**-#-**

What is beauty?

I look at the setting sun, all I see is the heat it radiates; another source of energy. A pristine lake is merely water, another element I draw upon. Flowers have minuscule life energy, their scent is just another smell.

I saw a pretty girl this morning; when I walked by her I didn't think about her body or her hair, or the perfume she wore. All I could think about is how much life energy she had.

I lay awake at night, horrified, from remembered dreams where I have drained my family of their life, merely for energy. Only a dream. My family is long dead, and not by my hand. But... if they did still live today, if all I needed to destroy Serenity was their life-energy, would I...?

I hide myself from the answer, lest it be "yes".

Is this what my life has become, an endless search for energy? Has my life so little meaning that hate is my only driving force? Is this all that immortality has to offer me?

Does it matter, if it gains me my life's goal, the end of Serenity and what she stands for?

No, no I guess it does not.

What is beauty? I no longer know. I gave up beauty long ago, in my quest to destroy Serenity's cause.

- Part of a series of diary entries, found in a library in Crystal Tokyo, 2802. Who put the journal there, and why, is unknown.

**-#-**

* * *

The man settled back against the building's roof, looking at the stars through the murk of pollution. 

"Somehow, it's not the same, with all the smog and stuff in the way" he noted, pulling his necklace off.

He lay there, for a few minutes. "So many stars. What chance, really, did they have to find a world they could live on?" He sighed. "I must be in a melancholy mood, to think of the exiles."

"Still, so many stars..."

* * *

**-#-**

I read a history book from Crystal Tokyo yesterday. It was heavily biased in their side's favour, although that's no surprise. Still, I was surprised to find that they allowed that maybe we rebels weren't 'completely' bad, that 'maybe', 'conceivably' we were actually fighting because we thought our cause was right.

I won't go into what they said on me, though. They've had to put up with me for a lot longer than they did the other rebels, and they're not quite so 'forgiving' to me.

Still, reading the 'history' makes me wonder again, what happened to the ones who were exiled from Earth? Are they alright out there in the eternity of space? The chances of finding an habitable planet are so slim, after all. Far more likely that they eventually died in their ships, their supplies exhausted.

Sometimes, when I am camped outside, I will look to the starred sky, and I will try to imagine the descendants of the exiles, living on some decent planet out there, their children playing, free from Crystal Tokyo's brainwashing. I imagine them happy, and free, and safe.

Only my imagination. Only a dream. But dreams sometimes come true, don't they?

Don't they?

- Part of a series of diary entries, found in a library in Crystal Tokyo, 2831. Again, who put the journal there, and why, is unknown.

**-#-**

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use. 

To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with **-#-** at the start and end.

* * *

**-#-**

The Purification.

Huh, 'The Brainwashing' is what it should have been called. A 'spiritual cleansing to stave off the darkness', the pulp authors of Crystal Tokyo like to call it.

Is it just me, or do words like that belong in a child's fairytale? Are people really so simple that they could believe such a pile of unmitigated whitewashed rubbish? While we're at it, perhaps we should all link hands with Mr Fluffy the Friendly Bunny and giddily skip down Happiness Lane.

There was, I vaguely recall, once a saying about cures being worse than the curse, or the cold, or something like that. The Purification was such a 'cure'.

The rebellion was over. Every rebel still alive and accounted for, besides me, was in space, heading towards whatever Fate chose for them. I was hiding out in the ruins of Osaka. Like most cities, it had been destroyed in the final fights before the Ice. Unlike Tokyo, however, there weren't over a million survivors of the time in the Ice.

There were only scattered handfuls.

Tokyo's bane also proved to be the catalyst for its boon. It was... is a mystical nexus point for trouble. As such, it did - and in some ways still does, in fact - suffer from a higher than normal rate of monster attraction. This bane also proved to be a boon, because it also attracted anyone who could throw around a magical spell or energy beam to the city. At the time of the Great Enemy there were quite a few teams of paranormals - from all around the world - living in Tokyo, all of them itching to blast whichever hapless monster happened to get in their way.

This concentration of 'heroes' in one area proved to be the rest of the world's downfall. There were no Senshi in Chicago to stop the invading monsters. None of the fangirls of the Senshi - all those other Sailor women - were in Kiev to save the people. No Star Warriors in Berlin, none of the Elemental Guard were in Melbourne. No Neo-Knights to protect Mexico City, no Crystal Protectors to stop the deaths in Beijing. No me to help Hong Kong.

We were all in Tokyo, and the rest of the world burned.

Oh, there were a decent amount of survivors here and there, you people are not alone, I assure you. In a few places, there were still protectors of one kind or another to delay the destruction. Here and there, the normal armies lasted long enough against the supernaturally superior foes to make a difference. And finally, the Ice destroyed the remnants of the enemy, and all it took then to be a survivor was having lived long enough for the cold prison to have saved them.

It is a grim testament to the enemy on how few that turned out to be.

My thoughts wander. What was I... oh yes. Osaka. I had just killed off a youma that had been threatening a band of ragged refugees when my senses, attuned to massive energy usage, made me turn towards Tokyo's general direction.

It began not with a bang, or a flash, or the singing of an angelic choir. It began with a sigh. Was it Serenity, sighing at the 'burden' of having to go to the effort of mindwiping the people? A sigh from the collective people, in sheeplike anticipation of their own free-wills' doom? Or a sigh from the planet itself, as it mourned the start of the 'cleansing' - the amputation of a large and important part of its soul?

Perhaps it was only me, sighing in despair as I saw the final evidence of the defeat of the rebellion. The white glow of the light of the Purification washed over the wrecked city like a wind-blown mist, settling on the people who had come out of their shelters to watch the spectacle, human instinct having served them as well as my energy senses had, to tell them that something was happening.

As the light settled first on, and then into everyone, I saw expressions of peace start to cover their faces, like... like a DAMN drug haze. I felt the power seep into me...

The mixing of my power and Serenity's is literally the textbook example of how certain energies - magical or otherwise - don't, shall we say, interact very well. Luckily the power of the Purification was so necessarily diffused that the usual (quite spectacular) pyrotechnics did not occur. But the point remained: the Purification did not... could not work on me. I was the same after as before, if in more pain from being bathed in the ginzuisho's stream.

So I stood there, my fists clenched in pain, as history was made. The people around me wept - presumably from some sort of 'happiness' at being half of what they used to be. I felt like weeping too, for in a large and important way, humanity died that day. For without hate, rage, all the 'negative' emotions, can we truly be called human? I don't have the answers, but I do know that this emotional castration was one of the worst things I have ever seen. No. No, not one of. It was the worst.

The world had changed, and I had not changed with it. Though it would take the Crystal Tokyoites almost another century to name me as such, it was at that moment, as I watched the energy glow depart, that my choices narrowed and I truly became an outsider.

And so the Earth was purified. Its ability to generate monsters was cauterised. Forever our planet was 'free from the tyranny of new monsters springing from the Mother soil'.

There was just one thing. One small, insignificant thing. Barely worth mentioning, really. Oh, just a small problem.

Most of the monsters that had plagued us didn't come from Earth.

- Words told to a small village in the south-east part of South America by a man who helped bring an end to a 'plague of demons who had threatened our village', as the village heads put it. The tale, apparently from the mid-25th century, was retold to members of Neo-Queen Serenity's Royal Guard when they offered the village their protection in 2482. The offer was politely refused.

**-#-**

* * *

He leant against a building, blending in with the shadows. His eyes followed the battle as his lips barely moved, whispering to the crystal that hung unobscured from his neck.

"Look at them. Four-strong, and still nothing compared to what they will become. The unlikely leader, the quick-tempered bitch, the living light bulb lighter and... and the ice girl. All we need is the happy psycho, and we'd have the complete matching set of inner flunkies. I wonder if Serenity came before or after the outer ones joined the cavalcade of fun?"

He blinked as Jupiter and Mars got caught in an energy attack from the youma. "You really have to admire their courage, eh my little friend? Look at them. Look at their auras. So weak, when you consider how powerful they turn out to be. So weak, and yet they still fight. They still win." He paused as Sailor Moon healed the youma, turning it back into a very dazed young man. "They just do it very, very badly. Look at them. The mightiest women on this planet, a bunch of amateurish young girls. How depressing."

The man turned his head slightly, his eyes picking out a faint, retreating aura glow. "At least Endymion was about as useful as he ever is. 'I have faith in you, Sailor Senshi. Now fight this dangerous beast while I run off'. Simpering little coward."

He shook his head, closing his eyes as he leant his head back against the cool concrete. That thing that Endymion had been holding, as he leapt away. That crystal... he couldn't remember ever seeing anything like it... not that that meant too much when it came to him. But he knew crystals. He knew a lot about them. And it worried him that these crystals that the Senshi, Endymion, and that Dark Kingdom pansy of a general had been squabbling over, they all seemed familiar. Worryingly familiar. These crystals they were like... like a reflection in water, a picture so distorted that you couldn't make out the true shape of the mirrored image.

And what, he wondered, did they reflect? There was something about these crystals that made him uneasy. And being uneasy made him edgy. But then again, being edgy kept him alive.

"I've got to get home! I'm not going to get a full night's sleep now, thanks to Zoicite! It's not fair!" a voice wailed from nearby.

He turned his gaze to a dark patch of trees, his eyes half-lidded from boredom. It had been, after all, just another youma attack. Maybe the crystals, and the similarity of Moon's 'healing' attack to some of Serenity's tricks had been worrying recent additions, but it was all still pretty boring.

The man's eyes picked out the four Senshi's auras, and he pulled the hood of his cloak slightly further down on his brow, an involuntary sign of puzzlement. Why had the girls retreated into a pile of bushes? A sudden pressing need for nature's toilet? Or perhaps they had hidden clothes there, to change into whatever civilian identities it was that they had. Or maybe...

His eyes widened as he saw the auras shift and change. "Gods..." he hissed, straightening against the wall. "What in all the hells...?" He rubbed his eyes, and stared again. They were curious auras, to be sure, but they didn't radiate the same patterns as the Senshis' did. He blinked once, as the auras crept out of the darkness, resolving themselves into four girls dressed in completely normal clothes. There wasn't a ridiculously short skirt in sight. Not one of them was making a silly hand gesture. They looked... they looked like ordinary girls. These couldn't be the Senshi, could they?

He frowned as he heard snatches of the girls' conversation. One of them comparing someone to her sempai. The blonde saying something about a 'Mako-chan' cooking dinner tomorrow. And, after a few more snatches of conversation, something about an odango-atama. His eyebrows raised. Odango-atama?

"We'll see you at the temple tomorrow, Rei," the tallest girl called out to the girl with long black hair, just after the four had separated to walk to their individual destinations.

Rei? REI? That was Rei!? But... but her aura wasn't the same. It wasn't the same at all. Whatever it was she had done to disguise herself, it was no simple glamour. What in all the hells had the girls just done? His eyes narrowed as he shifted his now completely alert body off the wall.

'Let them have their private lives', he had thought when he had first encountered Sailor Moon, after his time journey. 'They can do what they want, as long as they lead me to Serenity', he had decided.

But... "There is no way I'm going to let this slide." He started to follow the dark haired girl, keeping his distance, often letting her out of physical sight, using his energy tracking abilities to keep him on her tail.

He sighed. Stalking. How banal. Next he'd be 'finding out the Senshi's secret identities and threatening to tell the world.' He sighed again. He missed the old Mars. If he had tried to follow her, by now they'd have been in a bitter battle filled with insults, taunts and threats where one or both of them could quite possibly die. Damn, he was starting to miss those fights. They'd been a lot of fun.

Still, he couldn't let this lie. He'd thought auras to be almost unchangeable. Certainly, they could get weaker or stronger. But to be able to change them so radically? He'd sooner believe that Sailor Venus was one hundred percent sane.

But these girls may have somehow just done it. And if it could be done, that meant that Serenity could be anyone. His fists clenched. Anyone. Within a year or two, hundreds of young girls would imitate the hairstyles of the increasingly seen Senshi. Especially the most distinctive hairstyle, Sailor Moon's. Serenity's hairstyle.

If Serenity's aura was masked like the Senshi's apparently could be, then he had to find out how to see through the glamour. Finally, he had something to occupy his mind while he waited for Serenity's appearance. He'd find a way around this curious little magical effect. There certainly wasn't much else to do, besides the occasional hunt for youma.

And, he mused to himself as he crept through the shadows, who knows? Perhaps this was the key to ending it. Perhaps he could be a lot closer to finally finishing this than he had ever hoped.

* * *

Rei crept across the temple grounds, hugging the night-blessed shadows, as she tried to sneak to her room. She wasn't so worried at whatever punishments her grandfather might give her for being out this late, but she could just hear the words if he caught her: 'Out seeing a boyfriend, eh? Starting young?' would probably be the least embarrassing line used.

She could do without the old man getting the wrong ideas about her - it was bad enough when he was trying to get her friends to become temple maidens. She could just see him embarrassing her in front of the other girls about it, if she let him get any funny ideas. And so she snuck.

"You're distributing your weight wrong," a voice whispered from so close that Rei almost had to clutch her chest from the sudden leap of her heart. "And you should drape that dark hair of yours over your face. That way there's less chance of you being seen from a window."

"Who's there?" she hissed, glancing around, readying her defences. "Come out or I'll--"

The green-haired man stepped out of a pool of shadows, one hand raised in a gesture of peace, the other carrying the handle of a bag. He had changed out of his cloak, and back into his streetwear. Rei's eyes narrowed slightly; she hated the way he could just pop up like that. How did he do it? How did he hide in shadows when he was wearing a white shirt?

Her eyes narrowed even more. A dirty white shirt. Her nose wrinkled slightly. More pressing questions were put aside for a moment, as she asked, slightly acidicly, "When was the last time you had a bath!?"

"A while," he admitted. "The public baths cost money that I can ill afford right now."

"Well you smell disgusting. And what do you think you're doing, sneaking up on me like this? If you want to talk to me - something you should have done a while ago, I think - you could at least have the decency to do it during the day!"

His smallest lingering doubts that this wasn't Mars disappeared. He'd recognise her subtle social touch and gentle way of speaking anywhere. Besides, complaining about his hygiene had always been one of Mars's favourite opening lines in their fights. Except for that one time when she had caught him while he was in one of Crystal Tokyo's public baths, of course. But the less remembered about that particular fight, the better.

"Who are you? Really?" Rei crossed her arms and scowled, still angry at the humiliating interrogation her friends had subjected her to after this man's little 'revelation'.

He cocked his head, considering the question. Dozens of words ran through his head - killer, crusader, lover, hater, rebel, hero, villain. He discarded them all. Trite, hackneyed, none of them truly meant anything. There was no true way to answer the question without revealing the truth - and who would believe that? In the end, she was an enemy. But that didn't mean he had to lie to her everytime.

The man blinked, and settled for the best explanation he could use. "Who am I, Rei-chan? I am a man with too many memories."

* * *

**-#-**

I have been called a lot of things over the years. A lot of names, a large deal of which I have forgotten. I tend to give myself nice, simple names when I need an alias. Ryu. John. Abis. Miguel. Hikaru.

Other people, however, like to give me grandiose ones. It is like they believe that a name can somehow encompass my nature or something. I only remember a few now: Orion of the Crystal, The Final Hunter, The Ageless Wanderer, Starchild, Youma Destroyer, Grim Protector...

Soulless Killer, Murderous Bastard, Evil Scum...

The names come and go. A couple have stuck with me, however. The first is what I am most commonly known as to the Crystal Tokyoites. Simply, they call me Outsider. I think it came from something I said in one of my earliest battles with Mars - 'I am on the outside looking in, Mars, and I do not like what I see.'

Hah, I wouldn't even remember that quote if the Tokyoites hadn't used it as the banner quote for practically every biography they have attempted on me. To their polite and close-knit society, the name they gave me is probably supposed to be a subtle insult. As far as insults go, it suits the people of Crystal Tokyo: it's as pathetic as they are.

There is another name. I suppose, out of so many centuries of names, it is the closest thing I have left to a true one; it is the name closest to my heart. It is also happens to be what the Senshi and the Royal Couple call me. It is the one I chose, when I was a rebel. And most importantly for me, it's an easy one to remember.

I think it was just before our ill-fated attack on the Senshi's encampment. The others in the rebellion wanted me to select a name.

Because I did not achieve hibernation, like almost everyone else had during the Great Ice, I had already begun the spiral into the haze that is my atrocious memory. After all, I already had over three centuries of memories to contend with, most of them about the seeping cold, when most everyone else only had to deal with flashes and glimpses of the ice to intersperse their normal lifespan of memories.

One of the things I lost to that memory haze was my name. It's funny, really. To keep sane in the icy forever, I thought about my friends, about my enemies, about my family. I thought about all the power I had pumped into the Great Enemy, and how it had still stood, seemingly unaffected, afterwards. I thought about life, love, should haves, could haves, would-haves-if-onlys. And I dreamed - of peace, of happiness, of freedom. Especially freedom. I dreamed of having power to escape the ice. Dreams of power...

And it helped, it helped me to survive. But I never thought, I never dreamed about my name. And when I freed myself, I realised I could not remember it. And it didn't matter.

All that mattered was the fight I was about to engage in, alongside the other rebels. We had gathered. We had seen our efforts to divert Serenity from her selfish power trip fail. We had weighed the options - leave or accept Purification, and found them wanting. We prepared to force a new option. We prepared to fight. It was all some of us knew how to do.

We knew it wouldn't be as easy as one flashy battle. They had the impetus of legend on their side - the Senshi had been famous by the time of the days just before the Ice, and Serenity's appearance was just a legend that hadn't had time to be called that yet. To get support for our side, we knew we had to project an image that inspired people.

It was Onyx who suggested it. 'We fight for our Earth, let us take on names that reflect this'. Or something like that. It helped that taking on new names, new identities would protect our families from any paybacks, by either the Senshi or by the slavedogs that were some of their oh-so adoring populace.

I admit, I was ambivalent to the idea. What is in a name, after all? A name wouldn't stop raging fire, or crackling electricity, or will-chilling ice. As to protecting my family, I no longer had any outside the rebels. And so, as the others selected, I stood, I watched, and I did nothing.

But the others would have none of it. I knew Opal and Sapphire from before the Great Ice. Diamond, apparently, had seen me in the final fight, when I was at the peak of my sacrifice-given energy. And Onyx... well, who knows how Onyx found out anything: he was annoying that way. They were all confident in my abilities, they all urged me on.

And they all agreed. For the good of the group, I had to select some sort of name. Something appropriate to the others, to show our rallying of diverse people, all as Children of the Earth.

Sapphire had chosen her name for the colour of her hair and fur. Opal had decided on his because apparently his father had been a miner of the stuff. Topaz had an heirloom that was made of that mineral, and Zircon just had an inferiority problem. Amethyst had always liked that particular gem, and for all I know, Onyx was always Onyx. The reasons for the rest of the rebels' names I have since forgotten, unfortunately.

Finally, tired of the constant urgings, I agreed to take a name. I looked at the gathered fighters. They looked back, waiting for my decision. I looked at my little green crystal. I looked back to my comrades, and I smiled, having chosen my name. Really, it was obvious.

Emerald.

- Personal diary, dated 24 March, 2731.

**-#-**

* * *

He sighed, resting in the steaming bath. Rei had, after trying to get a lifetime of answers out of him, offered this bath to him. He'd been mildly shocked, to tell the truth. That was the worst thing about the girl - just when you get used to her being a ravening bitch, she'd show a glimmer of kindness.

Then again, he had stunk. Perhaps she'd just got sick of trying to quiz him while keeping her nose wrinkled.

"So what's your story?" he called out to the bathroom's window.

There was no reply.

"Come on," the man continued, putting his hands behind his head. "You've been spying on me and Rei-chan from afar for the last half-hour." And if I'd thought you'd heard anything that could harm Mars, I would not be quite so ambivalent. After all, for all I know she may be the one who found Serenity."What's your story?"

A shaggy-haired head popped up at the window. "What is it with this Rei-chan rubbish?" Yuuichiro snarled. "My story? What's yours? I've never seen you before, but Rei's been hanging off of every word you've said."

"Naughty, naughty. Spying on a private conversation. How gauche. You're jealous, aren't you? You're actually jealous of some vagabond she dragged off of the street. That's sweet in a way, I suppose. But I don't know you, and that speaks more volumes than you shall ever know. Will you be there at her side as long as she needs you? I think not. I think that I know not, in fact."

"You're wrong." And weird. I sure don't trust someone like you around Rei. "I'll be there for her, as long as she ever needs."

"Some promises can't be kept, no matter the will that drives it. Remember that. Don't worry, my jealous little friend. I am not trying to win Rei over as a girlfriend or anything. We are merely..." he struggled for a moment, trying to think of a way to say it, before he gave up. "We sort of go back a long way."

"You're not interested in her?" Yuuichiro asked suspiciously.

"Let's just say she's a mite bit young for me. I'm interested in a more... mature woman than this young Rei. Now please go away, you are truly bothering me."

* * *

Rei stared at the temple fire, trying to wring the truth from the words the man had given her.

"Thank you for the bath, Rei-chan. I am grateful."

She gritted her teeth. "Would you stop calling me that? Do you know how much grief I'm getting from the others because of your 'lovers in the past' speech!?"

"I'm sorry," he lied as he stepped up next to her, staring into the fire. "Get anything?"

She blinked. "You know about the fire?"

"Psychic visions through an elemental medium? It's more common than you know. In the time I remember, you were quite well known for your fire readings."

She hesitated. "Emerald..." she grimaced - he claimed he couldn't remember his real name, and that 'Emerald' was the one she had called him by in the past - but it was still a stupid name for a guy. "When I look in the fire, I..." Pride in her abilities made her hesitate again. She didn't want to admit that she had failed.

"Can't see me?" he finished. "I don't know how you remember the Silver Millennium. But my memories came to me gradually. At one point, I had to do something as a defensive measure, or else I may have died. And that something is the reason why I can't be seen in your fire."

"But how...?"

"I can't explain it." Because if I did, he thought, you might work out a way around it.

"Fine. Fine, be that way. What about the fights? If you're my... uh... friend from the past, why don't you help more in our fights?"

"Is that what you want? Truly? To scream like a little girl until the big brave hero comes to save you?"

"That is not what I said! No, I don't want that!"

"Then what's the problem? Look, if you really need help, I shall give it. But until then, I know that you and the other Senshi can handle the tasks that have been sent your way. I have confidence in your abilities."

* * *

They stood on the temple steps, looking at the darkened sky.

"So you really can't remember your childhood?" Rei asked.

"No. No, as I said: just too many memories. Far too many memories. With all of it swirling around in my head, some things just inevitably disappeared. My name was one of them."

"Too many memories? What are you talking about?"

"How much do you remember of your previous incarnation?" Emerald replied.

"Almost nothing." She admitted slowly.

"Imagine if you could remember. Imagine all those memories floating around, mixing up..."

"You don't mean that the memories of your past life in the Silver Millennium have swamped the ones from your current life?" Rei was horrified at the thought. If it was true, if he'd lost even his name thanks to his previous life, then could it happen to her? To the others? Could they all lose themselves to the past?

"The time where you and the other Senshi served your queen is easier for me to remember than the time of my childhood. My childhood memories are not gone. They're still there, all the memories. But they're all shoved into the background of my mind, so fuzzy, so hard to grasp ahold of. Oh, don't look so worried, Rei. I doubt you will suffer from this problem of forgetting. Who knows, one day you may wish you could forget like I do. Besides, I still remember so much. I remember you standing calm against a swarm of monsters." And I remember ordering them to head off the other paranormals as I took you on in that final rebel's battle.

He smiled. "I remember another time, when you called a storm of fire to protect your queen." I also remember having to use a building as a shield when you threw that storm at me. "I remember you wreathed in flames, an angel of fire, an angry vision of beauty..."

She coughed, looking slightly embarrassed. "Don't you remember anything else besides me?"

"Hmm? Oh, of course. A fine palace, with the Senshi serving and protecting their queen. Jupiter tending a garden full of great trees in a small park near the palace. Villages being attacked by this or that monster. Snatches of words here, part of a scene there, and so on. Sometimes clear as day, sometimes as murky as night. But yes, a lot of my memories seem to be of you." Of course, there's a lot of Serenity too, but I'd be a fool to talk of her, I might let something slip.

"I see. Look... I don't want to be rude..."

Sure you don't, he thought.

"...but I'm already seeing someone."

By choice or by death, they will leave you eventually, Emerald thought. No immortal love waits in the wings for you, Mars. Come the future, you'll be alone. "That Yuuichiro guy?"

"What? Yuuichiro? No! No, it's someone else. Besides, even if you did know a previous version of me, you don't know this me and I don't really know you."

Actually, Emerald thought, in the future we know each other perhaps better then we know ourselves. Each others quirks, weaknesses, strengths, what we'll say, what we'll do, how we fight...

"You do understand that it couldn't work out between us, right?"

You sound like you're trying to convince yourself. Gods, if we weren't always seriously trying to kill each other, we'd make a... decent couple. How thoroughly depressing. The closest thing I have to a soulmate is the person who most wants to kill me.

Emerald smiled a reassuring smile, and said "It's okay, Rei-chan. I understand how you must feel, with someone like me dropping into your life like this, so soon after you find out who you are. Whoever this person is, he's obviously a lucky man." Lucky he doesn't get immortality and have to live with your 'forceful personality', that is. "I promise, I won't get in the way. I just want you to know, no matter what happens, no matter what is said, if you ever find yourself alone... I'll always be there. Always." No matter how much you wish it otherwise.

* * *

**-#-**

Nothing is forever. But what does it matter if it feels like it is?

The seconds, the minutes, hours, years, centuries tick by. How long until it is millennia? Or more?

How long until there is a resolution?

It's not about who I am. As nice as it would be to blame Serenity for my being a killer and an energy vampire, I cannot. I cannot blame her for my immortality, or even for my seemingly eternal quest. I chose to be who I am. I chose the side I am on. Those are all my burdens of conscience, for me and me alone to bear.

Crystal Tokyo, the Purification, the exile - voluntary and otherwise, the blinkered 'good-evil' attitude that defines Crystal Tokyo, and, I am almost certain, the Great Ice itself... Ah, now those are burdens for Serenity to bear.

We are each other's mirror, immortal reminders of who we are and what we did to become that. We are both children of crystal: humanity is but a distant memory for us both. We are the obstacles to each other's happiness - a free world for me, a truly safe one for her. We are each other's eternal hell.

It is irrational, it is stupid, and it is the height of foolish musing, but sometimes I think more than all the other things, more than the centuries of reasons, the things I hate most about Serenity are the things about her that remind me of me.

I think we are both tired of this neverending dance between us. Sooner than never, that is all I know, one day I die. Or she dies. Or we both die.

There are no other ways anymore. That is all that is left to me and her, an ending. Above all, I crave an ending.

- Part of a set of personal journals, found after the Black Moon Crisis in a well-kept house, in northern Australia. This entry was dated 2850.

**-#-**

* * *

He watched from the shadows as the (now five) girls detransformed after yet another fight. His eyes traced out the differences in the auras - before and after - and he slightly smiled.

He was close. He was close to an answer. Soon enough, he would figure out this... this disguise of the Senshi's. And then, perhaps, Serenity could die at long last, wherever and whoever she was.

"So..." Minako smiled, looking at Rei as she helped the temple girl get some food for the other girls. "I've been trying to get to know you all. I hear from the others that you're dating two guys. Someone called Mamoru, and some other guy...?"

"Don't you even think about starting."

* * *

In a high tower, at a moment of tragedy, seven crystals - parts of a whole - became one once more. The ginzuisho settled into the crescent of its owner's weapon, glowing with the light of rebirth.

Sailor Moon reached out.

And Princess Serenity clasped the handle of her weapon, ready to defend her love.

* * *

Emerald leaned against the park bench, his eyes closed. His face was relaxed as he drew power from the elements. The soft wind blowing through his hair and ruffling his slightly grimy, now off-white shirt. The electricity from the nearby sputtering streetlights. The steady heartbeat of the earth beneath him, the gently swirling water of the large park lake...

His face was relaxed from his energy meditation, his body semi-limp, although still tense enough to spring to a defence if needed. His senses, the mystical ones that had little to do with sight or touch or any such mundane workings, reached out, gently touching the auras of every living thing around him, making him feel like a part of his surroundings for once, instead of some sort of forever-outsider. A smile started to twitch at his lips.

He stiffened. His smile dropped as his eyes shot open, startling a couple who had been walking by. As the young lovers hurried off, Emerald turned his head to the left, staring up through the masking set of tree branches to the outline of a distant building.

"Serenity..." he hissed, his eyes narrowing as he slowly turned his body towards the tower. He stood slowly, never taking his gaze off the tall building. His fists clenched and unclenched as he stared at the monolith.

One step, two, then three, and he was in the light-lit shadows of one of the sheltering trees. With one final clenching of his fists, and set determination on his face, he faded from view, leaving behind his bag and the glasses he used to hide his eyes.

* * *

**-#-**

It pays to be patient. And I am an intensely patient man.

But there are limits. Civilisations have risen and fell in less time than my fight against Serenity.

The simple facts are that Serenity is an extremely powerful woman. She is openly protected by four of the five true Senshi that I know to be still living, and the fifth one, Pluto, is no doubt shielding her queen in her own way. As well as Endymion, there are the Royal Guards, all of whom have more power than normal humans. Finally, there is the Royal Court - a large deal of the 'lords' and 'ladies' are paranormals - offspring of various paranormal survivors of the Great Ice.

Against this veritable army I have myself and a small green crystal.

Oh, there are small pockets of humanity that count me as a friend, for destroying one threat or another to their village. Some youma too, for that matter - I do not kill as indiscriminately as some would like to imagine. But they are all farmers, normal people (and monsters), they are not fighters.

Or, for the ones that do have power, they are either, quite rightly, scared of facing Serenity, or they believe they have no reason to. I could not possibly use any of them in a fight, they would only die needlessly in a battle they could not win. Only once have I directly used normal people's help in Crystal Tokyo, and the entire affair with that TV show with the ridiculous animal mascots - where I had the support of two very young aides, Michiko and Kensuke - convinced me that solo was the only way I could go when it came to facing the Senshi.

It is a lonely fight. And at times, it seems that it will be a fight that I shall never win. However, I will not give up. I will never give up. But sometimes...

Sometimes I just get so very tired.

- Computer personal log (voice recording), left in a small dwelling in Crystal Tokyo that had been believed to be abandoned. The timestamp places the message just before the failed Serenity assassination attempt of 2876.

**-#-**

* * *

Authors Note: The idea of the rebels taking on their names was to give a way of explaining why the future Dark Moon clan members had theirs - Demand and Rubeus aren't exactly normal names. And most mineral names are non-gender specific. If I use the true Emerald in the story, I'll use the Japanese name for her - Esmaraude. Or something like that. 


	5. Chapter 5

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use. 

To make life easier for the readers, "journal entries" are marked with **-#-** at the start and end.

* * *

**-#-**

The ginzuisho. Source of all power.

Ah, the source perhaps, but is that in itself any great thing? Which is mightier? The sea, or the creeks that are its origin? Are even all the rivers of the world as great as the oceans that they feed?

Over and over and over again, from the Senshi, from the assorted monsters and from the various aliens - the would-be 'conquerors' of Crystal Tokyo, it comes; a myriad litany: 'true power comes from...'. Whether it be 'true power comes from love', or 'true power comes from fear', 'true power comes from caring for others', or perhaps 'true power comes from controlling people'. True power this, true power that.

True power? Better to say, is there any truth in power at all? How can there be, when 'truth' is nothing but what is accepted as correct - and not all that is 'true', after all, is truly correct.

Well, whatever. I've heard it all before - 'you must be mad to be trying to kill the Neo-queen', 'the ginzuisho will destroy you in the end', and 'for one such as you, it is defeat, and not death, who is your constant companion.'

People can be so negative. The ginzuisho is the most powerful artifact in a world of power. I am out of my league when I take on anymore than one of the Senshi. Serenity is more powerful than me while she exercises such an experienced command of the ginzuisho. I am the enemy of an entire city, even if it is a city of spineless youma-feed whose idea of 'bad' is to pick a flower from the public gardens.

Young members of the Royal Guard make each other brave by saying how they will one day capture me, while the younger children are told of me as some sort of moral tale: 'see what would have happened if not for the Purification'. I am the being that comes closest to inspiring dark emotions in a people who appear to no longer have any access to them. As much as it is possible for those insipids, I am feared, I am hated, I am reviled. I am, as Venus put it the last time I visited Crystal Tokyo, 'not invited to any of their parties'.

I never wanted to be hated. I never wanted to be loathed. I never, EVER wanted to feared. But then, I never wanted Crystal Tokyo to exist in the first place. Life is not, as I have often found out, about what I want.

After all, if it was about what I wanted, then the ginzuisho would never have existed at all. For not only is it a source of power, but to me, at least, it is also a source of pain. Why, without it there would be no Crystal Tokyo, no Purification... ah, and no Serenity...

No ginzuisho? Perhaps that is what 'true power' should be - a world without such tools of domination, a world free to continue without worries of brainwashing and behaviour modification: 'purifications' and 'healings'. A world... a world free...

Perhaps... perhaps the truest power is no power at all.

But then again, perhaps not.

- Monologue taken from 'The Smallest Boy', a south European tale originating from the early 27th century. The story, about an ordinary boy who braved danger and distance to recruit 'The Sadman' to save his village from a terrible Oni, contains several conversations between the idealistic boy and the bitter Sadman. Strangely grim, considering the prevalently uplifting legends of post-Ice literature, it still ends happily, with the terrible Oni defeated, the village saved(and bolstered by Royal Guard reenforcements to replace the original small garrison killed by the Oni), and the boy admired and thanked by his peers. The Sadman, in a typical literary device, leaves the village the next day after refusing any reward beyond some food (and, as the man curiously puts it, the 'glow that I gained from defeating the creature'). Whether the tale is at all historically correct is unknown, beyond the fact that SOMETHING did destroy the original protectors posted to that area.

**-#-**

* * *

He faded into view, lips slightly parted in a snarl, his uncovered eyes glowing slightly - but not enough to lighten the dark of the shadows. His fists were clenched, and they trembled slightly from repressed fury. 

He stayed in the darkest shadows, his centuries-toned body tensed just enough for the deadliest of actions, but not enough for mistakes. His senses and instincts were wide open, ready for attack - be it against him, or by him.

Emerald looked around, taking stock of the situation. Five Senshi - one of them only semi-conscious, two cats, and some rubble. Nothing else; no Dark Kingdom flunkies, no Tuxedo Fashion-Horse... and no Serenity.

She was gone.

The energy in his eyes faded, and his snarl relaxed into an angry frown, but his body remained as prepared for attack as it had moments ago.

She was gone. Her aura didn't sing out anymore. She was nowhere near here. She was not here. This place - it was a parallel dimension; connected enough to the real world for him to have felt Serenity's aura, but distanced enough to have made teleportation a real mess. He'd lost precious time getting in. The metaphorical fallen tree on the metaphysical road of teleportation had ruined it for him, apparently.

But still and damn it all, where did Serenity go!?

He blinked, and looked down at his crystal, which hung uncovered against his chest. "What's wrong?" his voice was so low it could barely class as a whisper, low enough that not even the lunar cats' hearing detected him.

"The ginzuisho?" He blinked again, before looking up. The feel of its power was still in the air; it tingled against his skin like a light acid. His crystal was right, the ginzuisho was here... he frowned... but it was not here too. His eyes narrowed before he made sense of the energy sensations. Ah... those little pocket dimensions where the Senshi kept their henshin sticks, communicators, purses and all their other miscellaneous junk; it must be in one of those. Still... why did the Senshi have it, and not Serenity?

He resisted the urge to bury his head in his heads. The ginzuisho. The bloody ginzuisho, already! This was right up there on the top of the list of things he didn't want to happen, right alongside Pluto stepping up behind him.

He looked over his shoulder, just in case, before turning his attention back to the Senshi. Ah well, there was no use in worrying about the Imperium Crystal. If the Senshi had it, that meant that Serenity herself did not, and that, as small as it was, was something.

Emerald edged around the room until Sailor Mars was the closest person to him. The girl... in fact, all the girls looked a little sad. Perhaps they were missing their newly found neo-queen already. No doubt quite the event for them, since the poor children seemed to have decided to let distant past lives take over their present ones. That, of course, was if they were even right in their beliefs of resurrection.

Serenity had appeared once, she would appear again. And when she did, he would be there, he would gauge her power and experience, and he would choose the best way to get the task done. If she wasn't here now, she would be tomorrow. Or the next, or the one after, or a year after that. The only place rushing got you to quickly was the grave, and there was always a next time.

His face relaxed from the frown. Sailor Moon, the semi-conscious Senshi, would be fine. She was just a little drained, just looking at her aura told him that her life wasn't threatened. Still, it wouldn't hurt to show a little concern. The girl hadn't really deserved to die as young as she had, and it wouldn't kill him to be nice and give a bit of compassion to her while she still lived. He stepped out of the shadows, his face a mask of concern. "Is she all right?"

* * *

Sailor Mars was in no mood for surprises. They were still in enemy territory, their princess, finally found, was unconscious, and the man she had been dating, the man she had loved was taken - both from her heart and from her presence. How could she have had any hope of competing against the love of a princess and her prince? How could Queen Beryl have ruined even this bittersweet moment - the reunion of prince and princess - with something as low as abducting Mamoru? The way this day was going, Emerald would appear any minute now. 

Emerald appeared, stepping out of the shadows as if he'd always been there. Perhaps he had, she thought in a fit of annoyance. With his way of rarely interceding in their fights with the Dark Kingdom, maybe he had just sat by while Mamoru was taken.

"Is she all right?"

"She'll be okay. If you cared, why didn't you get here soon enough to do some good?" Mars winced as soon as she'd said it. It was not the best time for her, and he brought out that worst need in her to lash out, but there was such a thing as being too harsh. He had sounded truly concerned... Still, pride demanded that she not back down from her outburst.

He winced slightly, and then he smiled, before he said, "Ah, just like old times. I'm not En... Tuxedo Kamen, I can't be there for you like... he... always..." He slowed and then paused, noting the wincing coming from the Senshi. "I've said something that's going to prove embarrassing, haven't I?"

"Tuxedo Kamen has been taken," Luna noted as she padded the few steps from Sailor Moon's side to Sailor Mars's.

"Again?" the man asked before he could stop himself. "The Dark Kingdom has stooped lower yet again?" he added to cover his gaffe. Perhaps this time, he thought, one of the Senshi's enemies will actually manage to keep Mr Swank. But time had shown him before that he wasn't usually that lucky... "And... and Serenity? I thought," I know, "that I felt her presence..."

Luna hesitated for a moment. The awakening of her princess had triggered some of the feline's dormant memories, and she still couldn't remember this man from the Silver Millennium. Perhaps it was unjust to doubt the man, but there was just something about him that didn't inspire her trust. Perhaps it was the way he so often stood on the sidelines in a fight, perhaps it was the way those strange eyes of his seemed to bore through her when he looked at her, or perhaps it was just the fact that she found him personally irritating, but she couldn't quite bring herself to trust the man with the whole truth. Besides, if she was wrong she could always apologise to him later.

"Princess Serenity is gone for the moment," Luna said.

"But she's--" Sailor Venus began before Sailor Jupiter 'accidentally' elbowed her in the stomach.

"Princess Serenity is gone for the moment," Luna repeated, giving the Senshi of Love a glare when she thought that the green-haired man wasn't looking.

"Oh," Venus gasped, wincing when she remembered all those times that Luna kept on about how they couldn't trust this guy. "Oh yeah. Right, that's what I was going to say."

They all looked at her as she chuckled weakly. The loneliness of a solo career wasn't looking so bad all of a sudden...

* * *

**-#-**

_'And peace did settle upon the Earth as the euphoria of the Purification settled over as all. The last of the dissenters had chosen to remove themselves from our planet, and a new age dawned bright and clear before us. Surely this shall turn out to be a Golden Millennium...'_

What, excuse me, huh, and are you kidding? My, the quality of authors has certainly suffered since the Purification, if this 'history book' is anything to go by. This particular author, unfortunately, has seemed to have forgotten to put a paragraph or two in. Perhaps the historian should have thought to include these ones:

'_With the Purification finished, a complacent lull covered the planet. Most thought, quite naively, that an eternal peace had taken the Earth, and so humanity - if they could still be called that after the changes wrought by the ginzuisho - breathed a sigh of collective relief._

_A few short years passed, and then it started. A chance glance of shadow here, an overheard growl there, and unusual, non-human tracks in another place. Rumours rippled through the towns and villages as word spread of these pseudo sightings. Finally, stealth was abandoned, and a new generation of monsters revealed themselves to the world._

_The first of the post-Ice conquerors had unleashed their troops.'_

I can't remember the name of the leader of the first wave now, somehow it really doesn't matter; over the centuries Crystal Tokyo has attracted its fair share of would-be conquerors. And each conqueror brings an army. Oni, youma, kappa, whatever they end up being called, they come to serve their masters. And as their masters are defeated or retreat, these creatures find themselves stranded upon our little planet.

It is safe to say that most of the creatures are less than pleased about their new accommodation.

Of course, they can't stick around Crystal Tokyo - to do so would be their own death sentence. And so they spread out, going to ground, populating the world. Crystal Tokyo gets its peace, the rest of the world gets to deal with its problem.

After all, as long as a problem is out of sight, it is not a problem. It seems to me that such thoughts have often been a central part of the Crystal Tokyo psyche.

Golden, eh? A near-useless, overly bright material which inspires greed and coveting in those that look on? Why, how appropriate after all! They must be right, it must be a Golden Millennium coming! After all, with technology having moved away from conductors to crystals and other materials, there aren't that many uses for gold besides as an expensive ornament...

- Personal notes found in a very well stocked library in Southern Europe. Estimates put this note as originating somewhere around 2570.

**-#-**

* * *

He wanted to reach down her furry little throat and rip the information out. That damnable flea-ridden excuse for roadkill had obviously decided that he wasn't quite trustworthy yet. Annoying, arrogant, stuck-up little feline! What, was trust a black-tie only event with them!? Did he have to take lessons in foliage throwing and meaningless speech-making before this glorified rat gave him a break!? 

This was really unbelievable. If the Senshi didn't trust him, they at least accepted him. Hells, he'd claimed to be Mars's past-life lover and they'd swallowed that! Having Pluto try to stop him he would have easily accepted, having the Senshi not accepting him as an ally he wouldn't have blinked an eye at. But being delayed (ah, but only delayed, he thought to calm himself) by a talking hairpile had not been high on his expected scenario list.

He smiled. "Well, such a pity I missed her." You smug little piece of dogfood... "She'll be back eventually, I'm sure." And to think, if I remember correctly, I used to like cats when I was young.

"Ah well, there's always next time. Please give my regards to Sailor Moon when she feels better," he noted as he turned to leave. Damn right there was a next time, especially if he started tailing the Senshi twenty-four hours a day. He'd have preferred to have left them the dignity of their privacy but, quite frankly, blow that idea. He needed to find Serenity and he'd let himself freeze to death before he let such a minor moral quibble ruin everything. Rei didn't know it yet, but she was about to get a second shadow.

The man walked over to the shadows, rubbing his chin. There was something he'd forgotten, he was sure of it.

"Hey! Hold up a minute!" Jupiter's voice rang out.

He turned as Jupiter and Venus jogged up to him. Mars looked on, suspicious, but didn't move. Sailor Moon seemed to be waking up, and more than anyone else, their leader probably needed to see a brave face from her when she opened her eyes.

"I know you guys seem to like your mysterious exits," Jupiter whispered, "but Sailor Mars could really do with a bit of help."

Ah, he thought, mentally snapping his fingers. That's what he had forgotten to do, annoy Sailor Mars. "Help?"

"She told you that she was dating, right?" Venus continued, looking over to make sure that Mars was still on the other side of the room.

"Yes."

"Well, it turned out that she was dating Tuxedo Kamen," Jupiter added. "And now... well, she knows it ain't going to be. He's destined for another."

"Kamen? She was dating him?" He didn't know whether to laugh or cry; nobody really deserved Mars's luck with love. Then again, Serenity did marry Endymion. Perhaps there was sometimes poetic justice after all.

"His civilian side, anyway," Venus elaborated. "She didn't know until tonight that they were one and the same."

"Look, green guy," Jupiter took over the conversation again, "Sailor Mars doesn't need anymore grief right now, not from you, not from anyone. You've got to say something to her. Anything! You can't just leave her like this!"

He looked over at Mars, who was looking at them. "Alright," he said, nodding once.

* * *

Sailor Mars grimaced as Emerald left the two girls and walked over to her. Here we go, she thought. 'Oh I am so sorry', he'd say with that tone of his that makes you wonder if he was telling the truth or lying. Go on, pour on the pity, that's really what I want right now. 

He stopped in front of her, and blinked. Then he blinked again. He hesitated, his lips slightly parted as if he was going to say something, as he looked into her eyes. But then his mouth closed, and he blinked yet again.

She was about to ask him if he'd gone mute when he opened his mouth.

"There's really nothing I can say that won't sound utterly smarmy or insincere, is there?"

"No. Not really," she admitted quietly.

"A peace between us then. Be well," he nodded, turned, and left, fading into the shadows. Mars blinked as he disappeared before she turned back to her friends.

Artemis looked around. "We'd better get out of here. Unless the rest of you have shadowy lover boys scheduled to turn up."

Luna responded by whapping him over the head with her right forepaw.

* * *

**-#-**

It is said that love is the greatest power in the universe.

Not true. Hope is the greatest power.

Without hope comes despair. With despair, death. With death, no more chances to make a difference.

Have I truly made a difference? I've tried every trick I can think of to combat Serenity. Propaganda doesn't work, anyone with the free will of a gnat wouldn't live in Crystal Tokyo, and even those outside were affected by the Purification. While there are some around the world who don't view me as an enemy, none of them have enough power to help me fight.

A citywide 'solution' hasn't worked. The world's nuclear arsenal was completely neutralised by the enemy in the final fights before the Ice. More conventional weapons are easily blocked by the city shield that the Senshi are capable of raising. Satellite weapons, the few I could find out about, were either taken down by the final enemy, or were destroyed in orbit degrades while we were all trapped in the Ice.

Poison? No, no it wouldn't... it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't get me what I wanted anyway, the Senshi's physiology, like mine, could almost certainly handle something as petty as poison.

Sabotage? It had limited effectiveness, and Mars had usually started our 'game' before I could do anything useful. Besides, as much as I loathe the city, nothing is served by destroying parts of it or killing off its citizenry. To kill the snake by chopping at its tail is a fool's way, after all; you have to go for the head.

On a more individual level, it's not easy to get close enough to Serenity to make an attempt at taking her down. Jupiter and Mars are pretty thorough in their organisation of security. With me around, after all, they have had plenty of practice.

But sometimes I get close. Sometimes, even with her power, I penetrate her defences. Sometimes I get so close... so close!

And hope never dies. And until it does, or until my hope is fulfilled, neither will I.  
- Part of a far lengthier discussion between the pre-Nemesisian rebel, Emerald, and the Chaos worshipper, Lady Discord as the then neo-allies exchanged personal histories. Her followers, the Discordians, were known for attacking in random places at illogical times, which caused serious problems for the Crystal Tokyo defence forces during late 2589 and early 2590. Due to Emerald's nigh-immunity to scrying, information such as this was gathered physically, in this case by a Discordian who later defected after being healed. Sailor Mars couldn't believe that he actually joined Discord's cause, after decades of him acting alone,she had thought that it wasn't his style.

-- I thought you said you'd keep these notes impartial.

--- I just catalogued over three thousand documents for you, Rei, I guess I felt like cutting loose. You can always go through and redo them all yourself, if you want...?

---- No, no. That's okay.

**-#-**

* * *

Dark Kingdom Youma are an eccentric lot. Living in an isolated dimension that was ruled by a woman of questionable sanity and intelligence, where you manifested powers that would, on Earth, sometimes be considered plain silly, it was hard to keep a completely rational perspective. Millennia of isolation, inbreeding, and of controlling an invasion instinct which couldn't, thanks to exile, be exercised were bound to produce fascinating psychoses and other emotional problems. 

Confidence was a good example. Youma, as a general rule, were overconfident. Why wouldn't they be? The only great loss they had ever suffered - the exile from the Silver Millennium - had come after they'd won, as a last-ditch sacrifice from a near-totally beaten enemy. They were the supreme lifeform in their dimension... in fact, they were just about the only lifeform in their dimension, except for some foodbeasts. There were thousands upon thousands of them, each worth an Earth's platoon worth of soldiers, and that didn't even take into account the powers offered by Beryl and Metallia.

No-one, after all, would be stupid enough to try and invade them, for it was they who were the invaders.

He faded in, the darkness of shadow rapping around him almost like the cloak he had left behind in the park. Into the belly of the beast, he thought, as he looked around, hugging the wall of the large, ill-lit cavern that served as Queen Beryl's throneroom and audience chamber. And a rather cliche and tacky beast at that, he amended to himself as he noticed the darkly ornate throne that Queen Beryl was sitting on.

Tracking down Endymion here wouldn't be easy, there was a pervading aura that tinged the place, making it hard to sense individual auras. It must be that energy being that Beryl served, he thought as he eavesdropped on the queen's audience. What was its name again? He shook his head, he just couldn't remember, he was going on legends from centuries in the future, how could someone with his memory be expected to remember every petty little detail?

Eyes were the windows to the soul, it was said. That little saying had always made him wonder, what exactly was it that people saw when they looked into his multi-hued orbs? And what was it, he wondered, that he had seen in Mars's eyes that had caused him to attempt this foolishness. It must have been damn good, he thought irritably, because this was damn stupid.

Gods help him, it had come to this. He was actually wasting energy to rescue Endymion. If only he could say that it was to worm his way into the Senshi's confidence with a good deed. If only it was out of some perverse desire to have Endymion owing him his life. Those were understandable, easy motivations to deal with, he wouldn't have felt this bad if he was driven by desires such as those.

No, he was driven by something far worse. A desire to help Sailor Mars. A thrice-damned desire to help his most frequent enemy! Someone who had more than once roasted the skin from his flesh! A woman that he had once sent into a three month healing sleep from the amount of damage he had done to her! They were blood enemies, the only thing he should be helping her to was her grave!

But still... the girl was hurting. She was alone and discarded and hurting and there would be no way in all the hells that the stubborn bitch would ever show it.

Perhaps it simply came down to this: it was no fun kicking someone when they were down. The idea was to help them up and then kick them again.

Or maybe he was hoping that Sailor Mars would beat the living hell out of Endymion for dumping her when next she saw him. He'd pay a year's worth of good energy to see something like that.

Besides, what if... wait a moment. For a pitch-dark corner of a room it's certainly getting bright. And why is my crystal growling!?

He looked down, to see that his crystal was glowing a shade of green that he couldn't help but think of as 'angry'. And the glow was, he noted, rapidly brightening.

"You absolute idiot," he calmly said to the crystal as every youma in the throneroom turned to look at him.

* * *

He stared at the crystal for a moment before he turned his gaze to the youma queen. His face had settled into a sort of fascinated understanding, and when he spoke his voice was tinged with surprise. "It hates you. It actually really, really hates you. It doesn't hate anything, not besides the ginzuisho. It doesn't even hate Serenity. But it hates you. It loathes you.  
This... oh this is fascinating." 

"Who do you think you are?" Beryl's words grated through clenched teeth. A spy, an actual gutter-worm spy! Only the Senshi would dare to try and oppose her in this way.

The youma, hearing the tone of their queen's voice, and having at least some survival instincts, started to shuffle away, leaving a clear path between the intruder and their leader.

"Would you quiet down, you idiot!" the man whispered to his still glowing crystal. The crystal blinked once, twice, and then faded back to its normal dull sheen in a way that could almost be called embarrassed.

"Who am I?" the man continued after the crystal quieted down. Even without its glow, there were now still no shadows anywhere near him, he noted as his eyes flicked between avenues of escape, and the youma. Just his luck, he needed the shadows to teleport, and one of the youma must have used its powers to light the area. The bastards didn't deserve to get this lucky in limiting his retreat options.

"I... am Bauxite. During the Silver Millennium I served under General Jadeite. Sadly, I died when the Senshi did, but fortune allowed me to reincarnate, much as they have. Recently I recalled my true destiny, and came to offer my humble services to you."

"Bauxite eh?"

He nodded.

Beryl raised her hand and unleashed a power blast at him. "I don't believe you."

The blast slammed into a hastily erected shield. If he hadn't already been leaning against the wall, he would have been knocked off his feet by the force of the blast. "Pity," Emerald noted after the blast petered out. "Whatever happened to exploitable naivety?"

"So you have some power," Beryl mused, not particularly impressed. She couldn't help but stare at the crystal hanging at his neck. There was something about that rock that nagged at her time-eroded memory.

"Power enough to know better than this." He glanced down at his crystal, and hissed "No, we're not going to try and kill her." He paused for a moment. "I don't care that you're willing to help, she's the most likely to bring Serenity out of hiding. If you're so eager to help for once, help get me out of here. If you want to kill Ms Bad Hair Day so badly, we'll do it, but when we're in a more advantageous situation."

"Oh 'Bauxite'?" Bauxite indeed. Beryl remembered Bauxite, the silly little toad was one of the ones who got roasted by that Sailor V girl. Attending to gutter-vermin like this lying little spy should be a youma's job. Still, she mused, by spying in her throneroom this man had made a direct challenge to her power. Ignoring her as he talked to a gem was just an added insult. It was best that she kill him in order to set the right example for her troops.

He looked up from his crystal. "Yes?"

"Goodbye," she noted, bored, as she brought both her hands up. This time, she was ready for an energy shield.

He smiled as the crystal began to steadily glow. "Goodbye," he agreed as he faded out of view, the crystal overcoming his own teleportation limitations.

Queen Beryl blinked. She blinked again, muttered "Coward," and then turned to the horde that surrounded her throne. A coward and a spy. Perhaps this wasn't worth her personal time after all. "That crystal. I want it. Now. And I don't want the man carrying it."

* * *

**-#-**

People often wonder just how powerful my crystal is, and why if it has power, does it not aid me more often? Is it at all intelligent, or am I merely so far gone into loneliness that I feel I must talk to a green rock?

The answer, simply, is

- This is where the note (which was found stuck in a book on philosophy in the main Crystal Tokyo library) cuts off. Found by an observant librarian in 2719, the note was obviously put there to be found.

-- The taunting bastard. As a sidenote, no journal entry has ever been found that does more than hint at his crystal's abilities, origin and intelligence. It's the one card he has constantly kept close to his chest.

**-#-**

* * *

Usagi lay on her bed, her eyes still red from crying. On her nightstand, the opened star locket played its mournful tune. 

It was funny, it hadn't seemed mournful until Tuxedo Kamen had been kidnapped. But now, with him corrupted by the Dark Kingdom, she couldn't help but think how much she missed the days when that music hadn't knotted her up inside.

She raised herself to her elbows. No! No, that wasn't the way to think. They'd get Tuxedo Kamen back. He was still a good man, she was sure of it.  
He just forgotten or something; he'd been made to forget.

He'd come back to her, and they'd listen to their locket together, and he'd smile at her...

She smiled, lying back on the bed as she fought against the despair with dreams and hope.

* * *

Kunzite was not happy. Dark Kingdom politics had never been a weak youma's game, even Beryl had at least some reason to fear usurpation. But this... this was intolerable! Out of nowhere, Beryl had decided to make one of their enemies into her lovetoy; a lovetoy that might very well topple him from his once nigh-unassailable point as the second most powerful under Metallia's direction. 

Within only a couple of days of Endymion's awakening into Dark servitude, the signs had already become clear. Kunzite's supports of power were being driven out from beneath him by the puppet upstart. If he didn't do something soon, then with Endymion having the queen's ear, he might find himself joining Jadeite in eternal imprisonment. He needed a victory, a public sign that the failure of the other generals in no way meant that he would be a failure too.

The general looked at the youma scurrying around. Three days now and they'd still not found the intruder. It was all obviously a waste of time, if the spy could get in he could get out; he must be safely back on Earth by now. These overeager drones would never find him.

But he knew something that the beasts around him didn't. After every one of Zoicite's Earth trips, while he lay in Kunzite's arms in their bed, he had always whined about the hardships he had faced. Being swarmed by rats in a sewer, having this Senshi or that ruin his plans, he went on and on about his 'horrible days'.

At the time Kunzite hadn't been sure why he'd put up with it all. But now. ah, now he missed Zoicite's whingeing and ranting. Especially the ones about a man with non-human eyes, a man who possessed a green crystal, a man that had seemed to enjoy going out of his way to annoy the third general, and to...

Ah yes. And to talk to the Senshi known as Mars. Zoicite, despite the appalling flaws that led to his death, was a man of intelligence. He had seen through Nephrite's traitorous acts long before anyone else. One last time, Kunzite thought, one last time you were able to aid my plans, my Zoicite. How had he put it?

'I'd like to rip Sailor Mars open before him, just to know that behind that stupid hood and goggles there wasn't some kind of arrogant smirk...'

Perhaps this was one wish of Zoicite's that could come true.

* * *

Marachus was, like most Dark Kingdom youma, an upwardly mobile sort. Promotion was good, unless it brought you directly to the attention of Queen Beryl. Nobody wanted to be a general these days, for example. 

But chances for promotion were achingly rare; all the youma jumped at the chance to go to Earth because if they weren't killed, it was one of the few ways to rise on the rungs of success.

Capturing this spy was another way. Competition was fierce, especially since each youma had limited time with which to hunt - Beryl had directed that the search was not to interfere with preparations for the impending invasion of Earth.

Marachus, quite frankly, would have given anything to be the one to find the infiltrator.

Or so he had thought until a moment ago.

Emerald smiled, keeping the youma's arms entrapped with one arm as he kept his other hand around the creature's throat. To say that this was not the first time he had been chased would be like saying that lukewarm water was sometimes wet. He had laid low for a couple of days, to ensure that the youma weren't quite as fervent in trying to find him. He'd even avoided teleporting, on the very small chance that they could trace it, but he couldn't really afford to waste any more time.

"Telling me about how I can never win and all such boring humus would not be a life-extending manoeuvre," he noted. "You get to live, if you get to talking. It occurs to me that Endymion is not the only thing I may find here. A library, a loremaster, an elder with passed-down knowledge; there must be some of such callings here, if only to teach whatever young your people have. Wrack your brain, my new friend, and tell me where any of these might be found."

He brought the creature closer, never losing the lock he kept on its arms. "Talking sooner is healthier," he suggested, as his eyes stared into the youma's.

* * *

"My queen," Kunzite began with the usual faux-respect that Beryl seemed to be unable to live without, "I have come up with a plan that will advance our attempts to retrieve the ginzuisho." He resisted the urge to grimace. Getting the queen's permission to do anything these days seemed impossible unless it dealt with the Senshi or the Imperium Crystal. 

"I do hope it's better than your last plan Kunzite," Prince Endymion murmured as he leaned against a nearby pillar. "I'd just hate to see you fail miserably, it's embarrassing for all of us."

"Oh, it's simple enough for even you to understand Endymion." Kunzite glared at his rival. "Divide and conquer."

"Explain," Beryl interrupted, leaning forward ever-so-slightly.

"The Senshi's strength lie in their teamwork. Simply, we split one of their number from their main force and capture her. If the girls do not give us the ginzuisho as ransom, then we simply kill the girl, thus reducing their strength. Either way we win."

"And you had a specific target in mind?" Endymion smiled. "You do realise that the others will probably protect Sailor Moon with their lives, making your gambit pointless."

"I wasn't thinking of targeting Sailor Moon," Kunzite returned the smile, wishing seven kinds of painful death on the Earth prince. "No, they'd expect their leader to be the target of our attacks. I was thinking of another. Sailor Mars." Two birds with one stone, was that not the quaint little saying?

* * *

Emerald looked at the fragile, ancient scrolls that sat in small alcoves along the caveside. He was almost disappointed, it appeared that the youma he had spent time having such a lovely chat with didn't set him up for an ambush. Well, perhaps his informer would appreciate that there was value in telling the truth when it woke from the blow he had given it. If it ever woke up. 

"Is anyone here?" he called, more to be polite than to actually find out if the large cave was occupied. His aura senses had told him that long before his eyes or ears could.

"Ah, yet another eager seeker of knowledge, no doubt to help destroy our foes. Or did you think this was the way to the mess hall like the last one?"

He looked down at the wizened, red-furred youma that shuffled to a stop before him. From the little he had seen, from the legend of this place he had read in the future, the youma were a soldier race; an army exiled. But then, this legend had been from Crystal 'Slap-of-Whitewash' Tokyo. Every army had its cooks, its advisors, its hangers-on. And most armies made during a magical time - such as in the future - tended to have a loremaster or two. After all, when you faced magic in a battle, who knew when you'd need an obscure piece of knowledge? It seemed that a similar practice had been adopted when the Silver Millennium was supreme.

"Loremaster," Emerald bowed very slightly, "I am in sore need of your aid. I need to know of the time of the so-called 'Silver Millennium'."

"The Silver Millennium?"

Emerald nodded.

"You're sure you don't want to know how to focus your power into a beam of death-dealing energy?" the loremaster asked, putting a timbre in his voice which indicated that death-dealing energy was a lot more interesting.

"I know how to do that already."

"Perhaps some lore on how to instill gibbering fear in your enemies?"

"No."

"What sort of youma are you anyway?" the youma asked, suspicious. If this was the youma youth of the day, it made him glad that he rarely left his sanctum. No death-dealing energy? Really! He considered switching to speaking the Dark Kingdom language, just to remind this young upstart of his roots.

"The sort who will quite gladly crush everything breakable in your body, leaving your windpipe until last so that you can still scream out your enduring agony; if you don't stop stalling." Emerald lied. Sometimes the best threat was the most graphic, and when dealing with youma it was best to threaten a lot, lest you lose their respect. "Tell me what I truly want to know 'elder', or I'll show you just how much lore on pain-giving there really is."

The loremaster smiled. It appeared he was mistaken, the boy showed promise after all. It raised his hopes for the future if there were still young youma like this one around. Ruthless, yet with a proper desire to know exactly what had brought them to this desolate land. "Very well. What do you want to know about the Millennium?"

Emerald smiled back. "Tell me, what was the relationship between Serenity and the Senshi?"

* * *

"...finally, with his very dying breaths, the spacesword still lodged in his torso, the great soothsayer Bunbou didst slay the Senshi's leader, the warrior Venus. A great sadness didst ripple through yon righteous masses to see the last of the seven great demons fall. But the grief was mixed with emotions most glad, for their sacrifice had bought us the deaths of all of the Senshi from the inner planets." 

Emerald fought the urge to yawn. It was always nice to see that Crystal Tokyo didn't have a monopoly on ill-balanced propaganda. He hesitated as the loremaster's speech settled into his brain.

"Wait a moment."

The youma stopped his rather graphic description of the sacking of the Moon's capital, looking up from the crinkled scroll that he had been reading from. "Yes?"

"All of the inner Senshi? What about Sailor Moon?"

The loremaster scanned through the scroll. "I see no mention of a Sailor Moon in the chronicles of our glorious victory," he admitted after a few minutes.

"None?"

"No. I never pay much attention to individual characters, personally, they all die just as well at the end of a blade. Do you believe that this 'Moon'  
should be mentioned?"

"I don't know... there are a great deal of potential paranormals at this time. But... why would the others follow someone who was not reincarnated like them? It doesn't make sense. I... Military documents; spy reports, evaluations on Senshi strength, that sort of thing! There must be those sort of records here!"

"Some."

"Then please search them. I want to know how Sailor Moon met her end if it wasn't in this 'final fight' thing on the moon."

* * *

"Nothing? Not one mention? How can there be nothing!?" He slammed his fist down on the gnarled, blackened wood of the loremaster's reading table before he turned away in frustration. 

"This Sailor Moon must not have been an important power back then," the lore-youma surmised. "It means nothing." The reading table collapsed, the damage from Emerald's blow finally catching up with it.

Emerald folded his left arm across his chest, resting his other elbow on it so that his right fist rested against his lower lip. "Nothing? I can't afford to be that dismissive. There's something very wrong here."

After a few minutes of musing he shook his head, moved his arms to his side, and turned to the youma. "You've been most helpful."

The youma waved an arm. "I be no fool. As humanic as you are, you're obviously one of the general's get. Why, without those eyes you could probably walk through an Earth village with no need for glamour at all. By helping you, I'm sure I'm helping myself. Correct?"

"Yes, I suppose. It would also be of great aid to me if you could supply me with a map or two of this place. I have... lived in seclusion until recently, gathering my powers so that I could lend what glory I could to our common cause." Now, if he was really lucky he'd be able to get his hands on a map that would give details on Beryl's castle. That would make it easier to find Endymion now that the he'd given some time for the hunt for him to diminish.

"Map? We've never had any real need to put the maps to vellum. A few years in the wilderness of the Kingdom teaches you as much as any map ever could."

He fought the urge to sigh. Ah well. "Then just a verbal description of anything you feel important will do. Beryl's castle, for example."

* * *

**-#-**

Sailor Mercury could, given a short bit of time, bring an arctic winter to the Sahara. Jupiter could have powered the pre-Ice Tokyo grids with her electricity. Mars can call a firestorm that could easily blanket Crystal Tokyo. Venus rivals... even exceeds the ancient killer satellites with her laser strikes. My own powers and abilities can and have matched theirs, one-on-one. Pluto, for mercy's sake, can manipulate time itself! And Serenity is beyond us all. We are power.

So what?

Really, so what? Why does it always have to come down to power? How does having wings and an annoyingly powerful crystal make one fit for rulership? How does curious tricks with electricity and plants, along with a... brash. attitude make one the bodyguard of a 'queen', and leader of an entire Royal Guard of paranormals? How does one transfer being able to throw roses, and having a snappy tailor, into being a king? How, HOW could any one person be entrusted with time itself?

Does a small green crystal and a few... bad experiences make me any saviour of the world? Hells no. I couldn't save my friends, let alone the world. And yet I still try...

We are so arrogant. Oh so very arrogant. And as others age, and whither, and die, we are the ones who live, who continue, who swagger through our immortal lives.

Sometimes, I have to wonder what a world without all these powers would be like. Mundane? Of course. But would such mundanity be a very bad thing? Certainly, it's all very nice and all to be able to crush steel between one's fingers like so much soft butter. Teleportation definitely beats having to walk. Who wouldn't want to come back from wounds that would kill a normal person? But in the end, what has all this power and energy given to the world?

Pain. Arrogance. Fear. Intermittent struggles between this power and that. The emptiness of soul and spirit that is Crystal Tokyo. And, thanks to several cases of immortality, a promise that things may never change.

In my youth, I dreamed dreams of power. But now, I find that I dream of a life most ordinary, for all the world's people. I wonder, if these dreams were fulfilled, would they leave the same bittersweet taste that the ones of my youth did?

- Words taken down directly from Emerald himself in the year 2678. The woman who scribed the words was an elder for her town, which is situated approximately 200 kilometres northwest of the pre-Ice city of New York.

**-#-  
**

* * *

He couldn't help but be fascinated. Before him lay crystal after crystal, within each someone or something was entrapped. The crystals were scattered across the dead sands of a small desert, like seashells on a beach after a storm. When the loremaster had mentioned this in his rambling description of the Dark Kingdom's landscape, Emerald couldn't help but visit. 

As far as object lessons went, it seemed a little extreme. Each and every power-grasper had their own little way of keeping the faithful in line. Serenity had her mass-brainwashes, many of the others such as The Wizards Five just killed a follower if they failed, and Beryl, apparently, had this.

Eternal Sleep, the youma archivist had called it. The most feared punishment a Dark Kingdom resident could ever have the misfortune to suffer. At least being given to Metallia as an energy-sacrifice had some sense of honour about it, and didn't involve forever torment.

He peered through the near-opaque surface of one of the crystals, seeing the same expression on the trapped creature's face as every other beast here. Horror.

"Just like the Ice," he breathed, troubled. He looked around, slowly walking from one crystal to another. Who knows why some of these creatures were imprisoned here. Dissidents? Ones too powerless to be of use, put here as warnings to grow strong? Creatures too berserk or dangerous to trust?

Who cares? "You'll all be free. All of you," he promised. After walking past another four crystal traps, he stopped, turned, and walked back to the gem he had just passed.

"Starting with you," Emerald noted as he stared into the face of Jadeite, first of the four generals.

* * *

Jadeite, lowest of the four Generals of the Dark Kingdom (and the way Beryl was going through them, soon to be only general) was screaming. It was a rather pointless scream - no-one, after all, could hear it; not even himself. But then, perhaps that was the point in itself, perhaps he was trying to be so loud that it could pierce this immobilisation, pierce through this crystal into the outside world. 

Perhaps the worst of it for him, however, was that Beryl believed in a Dark Kingdom saying: 'What was the point of punishment, if it was not punishment indeed?' As she had entrapped him, she had removed the dark taint of Metallia's energy from his soul.

Just as he was entrapped forever, he became truly free.

Jadeite was, for the first time in ages, truly himself again. And he remembered it all: his betrayal of his vows, of his sworn prince, and of his love - his princess of fire, Mars. He remembered the last days of the Silver Millenium, the look on Endymion's face, and he remembered the betrayal in Mars's eyes.

And he screamed.

* * *

Emerald considered the puzzle before him. "Amazingly complex, is it not my friend?" he asked his crystal. He cocked his head, before he said "Yes, well, just because Beryl made it doesn't mean I can't appreciate it. And would you please forget about this fascinating hatred you have for a moment? I need your help." 

He hesitated for a moment, before he added "Say, if you loathe Beryl, why didn't you mention it before I 'ported into her throneroom?" After a few seconds, he shook his head. "Didn't recognise her until you saw her aura? Oh, all right. Just don't put me in situations like that, would you?"

"And to think I thought Jade boy here got killed by the Senshi. Perhaps I sorely misjudged the man, if he ended up imprisoned in this." He paused for a moment, considering. "But then again, I recall that he was using ridiculous amounts of energy in that last fight. Perhaps he knew that this was his fate if he failed; perhaps he had nothing to lose in using all the energy he had. Perhaps desperation clouded his judgement."

He scratched his neck. "Then again, perhaps he really was just an idiot." The man looked down at his necklaced crystal, and smiled as he wiped his hands against his grimy shirt. "Why don't we ask him?"

He ran his hands over the imprisonment crystal, his face a mask of concentration. "Well, it would take someone without a special affinity for crystals years to break this. And since I don't see Serenity around..." He pushed against the prison crystal, his hands sinking in as if the mineral was a liquid.

After a half-minute, he started pulling his hands out again. They moved through the gem silently, not even making a sound as they left the crystal, slowly pulling Jadeite out with it. He improved his grip on Jadeite's shoulders, and then fully pulled the general free, leaving the imprisonment gem whole, undamaged, and empty. Emerald lay the man on the ground, and then stood, looking at his semi-enemy.

He grinned as Jadeite pulled in a huge, shuddering breath. "The amount of people who know crystals like me could be counted on one hand," he told the general. "Serenity is the only other one who could have done that for you, you know." After a second, he looked down at his own crystal and said "Yes, yes. You helped too. Don't be petty."

Jadeite let out his first breath in months, and then he screamed.

And kept screaming.

"Jadeite? Jadeite?" Emerald looked down at the screaming man. He knelt, and looked into the general's eyes. After a moment, he sighed, reached forward, and snapped Jadeite's neck.

"You're free now," Emerald whispered, looking down at the corpse. "No second chances for you, I guess. And in a way, the Ice claims another..."

He stood, and looked at the other crystals. No, this was far worse than the Ice, if Jadeite had been that far gone in only a couple of months. He had a promise to keep; they would all be free.

And once that was complete, there was a matter of a nagging little question involving Sailor Moon. And he still had to start that twenty-four surveillance of the Senshi.

Emerald looked at the crystals. There were hundreds of them; clearly Beryl had not been the most forgiving of leaders. This would take a short while.

And who knows? Perhaps some of them would still be sane. "Perhaps," he noted to himself, "but probably not."

* * *

She was in real trouble, she just knew it. 

Sailor Mars dodged the youma's swing, scrambling away from the monster as she reached for an ofuda. Her fire attacks hadn't done more than singed the fur of this beast; it had proven to be highly fire resistant.

Almost as if it had been picked just for her.

She couldn't believe it, she'd been deliberately tricked into this fight. Kunzite had attacked three places in quick succession, waiting to see which Senshi came first. When it had been her, he had unleashed this thing on her and left to delay the others.

She brought the spirit ward out, brandishing it in her right hand as she began her prayer. "Rin... pou... aahhh!"

The youma grinned as she started to crush Sailor Mars's ofuda-carrying hand. Kunzite had said alive, after all. He hadn't said anything about intact. "Pyrox!" she cried out, using her name as a battlecry. Just because it was good in a fight didn't mean it was a sparkling conversationalist.

Mars gritted her teeth as she tried to kick the youma away. Unfortunately, she didn't have the leverage she needed to do more than a couple of ineffectual taps. She tried stamping her heel onto the beast's foot, but it just skittered the appendage out of the way.

Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges as she fought the pain. She focussed on her hand, trying to concentrate on keeping conscious. Her bones felt like they were going to give any second.

And then the pressure was gone. Sweetest mercy, the pressure was gone! She looked up from her aching hand.

Emerald looked back. He was even dirtier than last time, she noted irrationally, as she saw that he was holding the youma back. The youma's crushing arm was, she noted almost absently, completely crushed.

"Release it from its suffering Sailor Mars." He seemed far more subdued than normal as he kept a low drain on the creature, to stop it from firing any sort of power weapon.

She nodded, brandishing the prayer strip in her uninjured hand.

* * *

"I have to get to the others," Mars pronounced as the youma's dusted remains blew away. She cradled her right hand as she looked in the direction that Kunzite had left in. "Kunzite said he'd be making sure they wouldn't be here to help me, they might need me." 

"They'll be safe now that you've destroyed the youma. The Dark Kingdom general won't stick around now that his plan, whatever it was, has been disrupted." He looked at her. "Your hand?"

"It'll be fine. I'd still better--"

"Alright, I understand," he interrupted. "But before you go, could you honestly answer a question for me?"

She looked at the spot where the youma had fell. He had once said that he would only help if she truly needed it. Until now, she had half thought it was an excuse to keep out of fighting. Now... now she wasn't so sure. She really had been unfair to him for the longest time now...

"Okay. What's the question?"

"It's something I've been meaning to ask for a while." Emerald rubbed his neck for a moment before he continued. "It's Sailor Moon. I have to be honest, I don't remember her from the Silver Millennium. I wasn't going to say anything; I know she fights for our side, but it's eating away at me. Do you know why I can't remember her?"

She looked at him. He didn't know, he truly didn't. And he couldn't stand it. She tossed around the idea of not telling him, he deserved that. But he'd just grappled a seven foot tall youma just so that she could get the shot she needed. She'd trust any of her teammates, couldn't she trust him? Besides, the Dark Kingdom already knew who Sailor Moon had been in the Silver Millennium, if their recent ploys to trap Sailor Moon were any proof.

Sometimes, you just had to trust. Maybe it was time she did.

"Can't you figure it out? Sailor Moon is Princess Serenity. That's why you can't remember Sailor Moon from the past."

He stood there, frozen. "Sailor Moon?" he whispered, his face draining of colour.

Sailor Mars nodded.

"Serenity?" he breathed, barely audible.

She nodded again.

"You must be mistaken. Sailor Moon?"

"I know it's hard to believe. I mean, she's a clumsy, whining," Mars waved her hands, trying to find inspiration and finally failing, "odango-atama, but she is our moon princess." She looked at him, waiting for his response.

"Sailor Moon?"

"Yes!"

"Sailor Moon?"

"YES, SAILOR MOON! YES YOU IDIOT! SAILOR MOON!"

His left eye twitched once. Then it twitched again as his hands slowly curled into fists, and then uncurled again "You didn't have to tell me that," he noted. "Why did you tell me that?"

"Because you deserved to know, no matter how much you're ruining my life. And you saved my life. What sort of bad guy would do that?"

"...Yes. Yes, what sort? I... have to go now." His left eye twitched again, sweat beading on his forehead as he fought to stay in control.

"Are you okay?"

"I... am... ecstatic to find my... queen and feel a little overcome. That's all, dear Rei. Excuse me." He ran for the buildings, and the shadows they provided.

"Hmph. Rude as always. Didn't even acknowledge my thank you," Sailor Mars noted before turning to leave.

* * *

He teleported onto a plain in the Dark Kingdom, only a kilometre or two from Beryl's castle. His body was trembling violently, and green energy was beginning to arc like jade lightning around his tightly clenched fists. 

"Six hundred and fifty years, not counting the Ice," the words hissed through clenched teeth.

A scattered group of youma, seven in all, edged towards this newcomer, curiosity on their faces.

"It could not, it cannot be... Mars must have lied. And yet... and yet..."

One of the youma finally realised something. If it looked human, it wasn't Kunzite or Endymion, then that meant... "The spy! Queen Beryl will reward us well for his death!"

"They actually played me like a fool for centuries...!"

A couple of the other youma silently cursed their loudmouthed 'friend'. They had hoped to get the spy alone, so that they could be the only ones to get the queen's reward. Now it would have to be shared between all of them.

The man seemed to notice his onlookers. It was typical, he went to the one place he could get to quickly where he could completely lose his temper without regrets, and this happens! He wasn't at all in the mood to be nice.

"You leave," he paused as his eyes started to glow as brightly as the energy arcing around his hands, "or you die."

* * *

It took the youma reinforcements five minutes to reach the area. When they got there, however, there was nothing left except the ashen remains of their brethren, and a few words carved... more like blasted into the ground. 

The youma looked at the dust piles, and then at each other. For once, overconfidence wasn't enough. Right now, they were very, very glad that they hadn't reached here in time to meet the thing that had done this.

They looked at the blasted writing, one scratching her head. While Japanese had become the main language spoken in the Dark Kingdom, due to the long planned invasion, not that many of the youma had bothered to learn the written language. Finally they gave up, turning away from the words as they looked again at the dusted remains of their comrades.

'IT ENDS, SERENITY. IT ENDS.'

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use.

In a change of direction in this chapter on, **v\v/v** will denote Crystal Tokyo era Senshi journals/recording. Normal Emerald journals will be shown as usual( **-#-** )

This chapter was originally published as chapter 6a - it has now been split into chapter 6 and 7 and had a couple of the journal entries moved around to maintain story flow. Minor changes were also made to the tv scene at the very end of the chapter. Only chapter 8 onwards will be material that has not been published before.

* * *

**-#-**

There's only one thing worse than centuries of enduring hate.

And that's a single moment of shared concern.

Crystal Tokyo had sunk into a somnambic peace. The last conqueror that I knew of had come and gone over one hundred and fifty years ago. My own forays into the city since then had mostly been minor scout missions: I didn't even get into a fight with the Senshi on the last two.

Obviously, it was only a matter of time before the metaphorical dam broke.

The fight between Mars and I was phenomenal. Our mutual frustration finally overcame us, and we pulled out all stops for a victory; after all, we had been clashing on and off for six hundred years and we were sick of it. All of our best insults were long since used up, we'd slept through each other's speeches and justifications a hundred times before, neither of us was in the mood for the usual dance, and so we FOUGHT.

Firestorms, energy clouds, mystical attacks and defences, the air literally crackled with mana. I don't know why, but no other Senshi interfered, nor the Royal Guard. I forgot about going after Serenity, and the need for conserving myself, she forgot about the fact that it was her city we were quite inadvertently destroying. For once we fought to our potential.

And we had a lot of potential.

At last, we faced each other across a too-clean street, after almost an half-hour's worth of dodging, swearing, fighting, and hurting.

Along with a broken wrist and some fractured ribs, Mars had also suffered energy burns on her right side, from torso to thigh. Her suit had burned half away, the harsh blisters an ugly sight against her semi-pale skin.

I had been forced to throw off my supposedly fireproof cloak and my shirt, leaving me in a set of charred trousers. At least a third of me was covered in the worst of burns. My goggles had melted onto my face, and I had to rely on my mystic senses over my hampered eyesight. Perhaps that was fortunate, because it meant that I couldn't look at the charred ruin that was my left arm.

We could heal from these wounds; as horrible as they would sound to a normal person, we are immortal. That means more than a long life span, it also indicates a will to live that goes beyond the normal, and it meant that we had means to repair our damaged bodies. If we disengaged, given time, the next encounter we had would find us as we always were.

If we disengaged. Something was different; the centuries had finally pushed our patience beyond the breaking point. For once, I would not retreat, and for once, it appeared that there would be no backup for Mars.

When we were young and inexperienced, we required gestures and phrases - incantations to gather the mana for our attacks. 'Mars Hot Pants', 'Light of a Thousand Candles', or whatever silly things it was she said as a teen; those sorts of things. But we got better. We got a lot better, and we grew beyond that. Attacks that used to take seconds to release now hurtled from you within a blink of an eye. If you didn't pay attention to your attacker, you would die. Inattention was death, and so we stared at each other, preparing ourselves for whatever came next.

Her next attack, a white hot lance of plasma, was deflected by a beam of my own energy, and we continued to stare, shutting out all else, our lives depending on reading what our opponent was going to do next. We didn't even waste energy on taunts; all there was in our worlds, at that moment, was the other.

One scream broke through it all.

The child shouldn't have been there. Even the cattle in Crystal Tokyo knew better than to remain near one of these sort of fights - hells, from what I'd overseen, it was part of their education system: 'Sailor Safety says seek sanctuary!'

But he WAS there, spying on us, underneath a building that had just been hit by our combined energy. And even the strongest crystal grown by the ginzuisho couldn't stand up to that sort of intertwined magic.

Mars ran forward; it had to be her, I had no shadows to teleport with, and she was always slightly faster than me, slight enough to make a difference. She never hesitated, never seemed worried that I would blast her in the back. I could have killed her in that moment.

I could have...

But for a moment, just that moment, there was reason enough to forget about the hate. I can't explain it, I really can't: somehow, all the knowledge we had of each other, our battle-experiences, the awareness of the other that brought us through our fights, our shared enmity clicked, and we acted as one.

I gave her the extra seconds she needed. For that moment, they weren't a Crystal Tokyo zombie and my most enthusiastic enemy. For that moment, as trite as it sounds now, they were just a boy and the woman who was trying to save him. I cast a shield over the child and Mars, long enough for the Senshi to grab him out of harm's way.

Was it heroic? Certainly, in the same way that, say, bandaging a man you'd just beaten unconscious could be considered humanitarian. To be honest, when I think back on it, it was all oh-so very cliche. And we were, after all, the ones to put the boy's life in danger - although the silly little anklebiter shouldn't have been there.

Still, it was a child's life. And for that one strange instant, all I know is that Mars and I had a bond that was more than just hate. Just for an instant.

When I looked at Mars through my damaged goggles, as she held the child to her, I found that I couldn't read her at all. A woman who, like Jupiter, was always content to wear her anger and most other emotions openly, and I had no idea what she was feeling. And then she spoke, in a tone so calm that for a brief second I wondered if it was Mars at all. "It has to end."

I left without a word.

I would never have expected her to say that. And yet... she was right. It did have to end. It couldn't go on like this, meaningless fight after meaningless fight, with the only casualties being onlookers and the 'hired help' such as the Royal Guard. Survival was not enough, not any more. It had to end.

But it would never end. I couldn't just give up; there was no-one else left to stand up to the Senshi. Most of the conquerors didn't count, the majority of them were as selfish in their grand plans as the Senshi were. If I gave up, then it would be as if I was saying 'Yes, you were right, I was wrong. And Serenity was wrong. She might have done it for what she thought were all the right reasons, but she was wrong.

Who knows? Maybe so am I. But as long as Serenity was wrong, did it matter? Because at times, that is all I can see that seems to be left to me: to be an eternal reminder to Serenity, to always be there to show her, to never, ever let her forget... she had blood on her hands, and dirt on her soul. And that while she had saved her people, she was not a saviour.

If only it would end, but it can't. For I would not surrender, I REFUSED to die until Serenity did, or until the mistake that was Crystal Tokyo was erased.

And therein, I suppose, lies the entire problem. We immortals are too set in our ways, too disparate in opinions for a compromise to ever work. I couldn't trust Serenity as far as I could throw her city, and I know I'm viewed no differently.

If only there was a way to set things right, to erase the mistakes, to write the log anew, a way to stop it all from happening in the first place...

A way to reset the clock, so to speak...

- First entry in a small diary that was found by scavengers near Crystal Tokyo, in the year 2911 AD. When this entry was written, and by whom remains unknown.  
-- What do you mean unknown? It's obvious!  
--- Remember, you said you wanted these footnotes to be impartial. After all, it could have been someone else who wrote the entries down, from conversations with him.  
---- All right. Fine, fine Ami, do it your way then.

**-#-**

* * *

Sunlight sifted through crystal spires, casting a faceted glow over Crystal Tokyo. 

"I'm telling you it's been too long."

"Mars..."

"Well, it has!"

"You're obsessing again, aren't you?"

"It's not an obsession! And I... hey, wait a minute! Me? Obsessing? What about you, Miss 'I'm going to go do some scientific research, call me in ten years'?"

"That's not obsessing, that's a search for knowledge."

"Mercury...!"

"All right; how long has it been since you've last had a report on his location?"

"Forty-two years."

"You're right, it's been far too long."

"Is that your scientific opinion?"

"If you're going to be like that, I'm going to go back to my project."

Mars looked over at the 'project', which sat in one corner of the spacious lab. 'Thing', that's all you could truly call it, it was such a menagerie of cables, metal and crystals that it was too hard to pin it down with a better name. "What exactly is that supposed to do anyway?"

Mercury looked at the hideously complex amalgam of Crystal Tokyo, Silver Millennium, and other technologies gleaned from some of the would-be conquerors. "Do you have a year free for me to tell you?" she asked.

"It's starting to look like I'll have several, unless another alien invasion happens before the Nemesis clan return."

"You do realise that sometimes it seems like that man can't walk across a room without making enemies of everyone present. Most of the youma fear and hate him more than anyone in this city ever could. Perhaps he just ran into something he couldn't kill, talk or run his way out of. Or perhaps whatever method that crystal of his uses to keep him young finally failed."

"What about that entry we got our hands on recently? The one that made allusions to him trying time travel?"

"If there was any danger of him creating time pollution, wouldn't Pluto have warned us?"

There was a very, very short pause. "I have to speak to Pluto."

"Good idea."

* * *

It was a bleak, featureless dimension. Light grey skies stretched so far in every direction that they seemed to distort the landscape - which was only slightly different in colour to the sky, and was just as boring. Large, morose grey clouds hung in the sky, casting dull shadows over the ground. 

It was dull. Gods, the place was really, truly dull.

There were no god-like energy beings here, no race of sadistic monsters, no delusional rulers bent on conquest. No plants, no hills or valleys, no life; as far as interesting went, this place wasn't.

He sat there, crosslegged, his small crystal floating before him. His eyes were closed, his hands cupped on his lap. Self-neglect had left the fair beginnings of a beard, and dust covered what skin the clothes and hair did not.

The rage had consumed him; had he not left Mars when he had, she would have been dead by his hand. Of that, her skills withstanding, he had no doubt. He'd come so close; so close to killing everyone, killing anything in his path. He hadn't been so angry, so furious, so trembling with rage since... since...

He couldn't remember since when. Probably not since right after the Ice, at the moment that he had seen Serenity worshiped... if even then. The fury had bubbled in him like... well, like nothing, really. Comparisons were useless - boiling water, sulfur, lava, they were not adequate descriptions. His fury had seethed, yes, just seethed, that was the best way to put it.

Worse, he had killed sentient beings, seven youma, in an attempt to exorcise the anger-lust. He had killed like a petty, mewling child! Like a spoilt brat, breaking things in some attention-seeking tantrum! No remorse, no forgiveness, NO REGRETS, he had killed for NO better reason than to try and break free of the fury!

And it hadn't worked. The anger had only welled after that, seething through him like ice-hot energy. Hate had given him a power rush greater than even his most enervated moments throughout the centuries.

But that was not his way. He was the calm one. Grim. Silent. Soulless. CALM...Cold. These were the words used to describe him in the annals of Crystal Tokyo's libraries. 'Hate rode at his left hand, Anger at his right, while Death sat on his shoulder, riding him all the way to hell'.

...Who had said that of him? It can't have been the Crystal Tokyoites, there was no way they would use such aggressive words. The Senshi? Probably not, it was a bit too flowery for them. Perhaps one of the conquerors, or one of the smarter youma he had faced? Well, someone had probably said it once, somewhere, somewhen; somehow he remembered the quote still.

What mattered was that anger had been his constant companion for centuries; no one could imagine the levels of hate and fury reached for them to so overwhelm him. Except, perhaps ironically, the ones such as those he had killed in his rage - ones such as the youma. They might have understood.

Such levels of hate were literally self-destroying. He had seen fools come and go, so wrapped in petty anger that they could not see the Senshi for the opponents that they were. Their anger blinded them, their hate clouded their judgement, their mistakes killed or 'purified' them in the end. He had spent too long not dying from such stupid mistakes to start now.

Besides, if Serenity was to die at his hands, then it would be at the hands of someone of reason, of thought, not at the hands of some berserker animal that was living off some sort of blood lust. To die like an animal was to be killed by one; his respect for life might not be the greatest, but there were WAYS. And there were ways not to kill.

In the end, there had been little choice. Being around anyone, even youma, would have only prolonged the rage. He had needed to regain his centre of being, his will that had carried him through centuries. So he had enacted a backup plan - to survive centuries of opposition to the Senshi, he always had to have a backup plan - and came here.

A boring little dimension that had nothing going for it except nothing at all. No distractions, nothing to focus the hate on except himself. And best of all, it took superhuman concentration and a stone-calm application of knowledge to get out. Here, for however long it had been, he had sat with no choice but to regain his emotional centre.

His eyes snapped open, the differing shades of green in the orbs shifting as his pupils dilated against the muted light.

He was calm. He was in control. He was ready. And he knew what to do. The time for observing was over. It was time to get out of this dimension, and be a little... proactive.

He paused, halfway through the act of standing, as he searched through his time-misted mind. How did you get out of this dimension?

"Damnation."

* * *

He walked between the empty Eternal Sleep crystals, his eyes scanning the dusted remains of the insane he had 'freed'. Occasionally, he would reach down and pull something from a pile. Here, a set of boots. There, some pants. More than a few of the trapped had been humanics, ones who felt the need for clothes for modesty or survival reasons. 

It was funny, but he'd always found it easier to loot a dustpile than a corpse. He wondered how much of a hypocrite that made him; after all, whether it took minutes or months for a body to decay, it was still all sentient life. Theft from a dead youma should be no different than theft from a dead human. It was just one of the psychological quirks involved with grave robbing, he guessed.

Idly, he dusted his hands against his grimy shirt. He had to absolutely ascertain that Moon was Serenity, and if she was not, then he would still need the pseudo-trust he received from the Senshi to find the real girl. Waiting for another 'appearance' from Serenity would be unwise; he couldn't afford to let her gain mastery of the ginzuisho. So he needed a disguise for the inevitable confrontation.

Glamours and disguise magic were out; he had a fairly diverse range of skills, but such spells simply fell outside his abilities. No-one, not even Serenity, could do everything after all.

So it was all in the clothes; in the nine hundred and fifty years he'd known the Senshi, he remembered each cycling through maybe three or four different costumes - each only a slight variation on the same theme. While that probably made deciding what to wear in the morning an easy chore, it also hinted at the mindset of his enemies, a mindset that was probably already developing within them. Quite likely, all he needed was a radical enough change in clothing and general appearance, and they'd never recognise him.

He turned his nascent plan around in his mind, his eyes narrowing as he considered the rags he had gathered. There was still something missing.

The man held his right hand before his gaze. His eyes glinted, and the air around his fingers shimmered with viridian light. Slowly the light built up, mote by mote, the glow seeming to gain physical mass. Finally the energy dimmed to nothing, leaving everything on his hand but the finger joints encased in green crystalline armour. He smiled as he flexed his fingers; he'd almost thought that he had forgotten that old trick.

His smile faded, his will allowing the crystal gauntlet to disintegrate. Now, if he could only do something about his eyes.

* * *

A handful of youma hid behind a sleep crystal, looking at their saviour as he tried on a set of trousers. It was hard to know what to do; he'd freed them from the Eternal Sleep. He'd given release - of one sort or another - to them. 

In all, nine had survived with sanity intact; or intact enough to pretend, anyway. Nine out of just under five hundred.

You had to admire Queen Beryl. She really went to that extra little bit of effort for her people.

It was a mixed blessing. Free they might be, but they were outcasts in their own society. Each and every youma owed its power to Metallia - literally. Since having youma draining each other in a cannibalistic search for energy would have meant a decimated invasion army, Metallia had ensured that when she created her subjects, they could not drain each other. Or, to be more exact, while they could drain their fellows, they could not feed on that energy.

What energy they did not take from the humans, and from the natural mana of life, came from her presence in their world. She was truly their god; if she perished, those who relied on her would die.

To be outcast meant to be powerless, lower than low. No power, and no hope in this dimension of gathering any. And if any of their fellow youma saw them, then they'd probably experience the joy of being guinea-pigs in Beryl's experiments to find a punishment worse than the Eternal Sleep.

The Sleep had left them drained of energy, weak of body, and with emotional scars which would, quite literally, leave the average youma screaming. In their state, they couldn't fight off a child - a human one at that. Food, not anywhere near as important for youma as for humans, was actually becoming a pressing concern as well, a real indication of how desperate their situation was becoming.

The two forays they had made to get supplies had failed, and almost got them caught. In the end, they'd had no real choice but to remain here, at the very site of their torture, simply because it was the one place in the Dark Kingdom that youma avoided.

The green-eyed man may have saved them, only to leave them to a slow death, starving of food and energy in the place they hated more than any other. Really, what sort of saviour was that?

* * *

"Those girls had it easy," he muttered as he struggled to pull a boot on. "A quick twirl of a magic stick, an activation phrase the braindead could remember, and voila, instant clothing and aura change. What do I have? Too tight boots, far too grimy pants, and a jacket a dead man was wearing not that long ago." 

Finally, after five minutes of hopping around, he managed to get the boot on. He glanced over at the second boot, which was still sitting in a dustpile, and softly cursed.

A soft, agonised growl sounded from behind one of the more distant crystals. Emerald's head turned, his eyes narrowed. There were faint, very faint auras over there. Surely some of this dimension's native beasts, its equivalents to birds or whatever?

It was best to be sure. He walked over to the area, tensed for attack, his eyes scanning the area the growl came from as he kept his other senses alert for dangers from other areas. Finally, he saw what had made the growl, and he cursed again, but this time he cursed himself.

He looked at the emaciated youma as they looked at him. Oh hells; he'd forgotten about them. Finding out that you've been tricked for the past six hundred and fifty years tended to make your mind gloss over everything else.

He had known these creatures had been weakened when he freed them; if they hadn't been, then he would have probably glutted on the incredible energy high of draining hundreds of youma, instead of just killing them outright. It was his fault they were dying here like this; he had meant to come back to make sure they survived. After all, he had only left to get away from the grim feelings of death for a little while. Going to Sailor Mars was supposed to have been a feel-good diversion of innuendo and insults, but then life had turned, and he'd had to deal with the consequences.

"If you did not free us as a form of torture," a youngish, female youma with ursine features and yellowish fur growled, "then at least kill us like you did the rest. If we cannot be strong, then why live?"

He looked at them, resisting the urge to sigh. Most of the monster races valued strength and power above everything else. To be drained as much as these creatures were, to be as weak and helpless as a newborn was to them probably a horrible torture in itself, and that was quite probably a deliberate part of the Eternal Sleep punishment. His crystal had been vague in its reasons for hating Beryl, but if that woman was capable of creating a punishment like this... well, it was starting to look like he wouldn't need to oppose Beryl just to satisfy his crystalline friend.

He rubbed his stubbled chin as he thought. He didn't go to the effort of saving these creatures just to have them die a slow, horrible death. A quick and relatively painless death would be better, but... he looked over at the empty crystals that lay in the sand like empty tombs.

But there had been enough... too much death here, even if it had been as a final release to the mad. To kill the ones still sane would be a victory for Beryl. The gods knew that his crystal would never let him hear the end of it if he allowed that woman to get anything easy.

He looked down at his right hand, and this time didn't resist the urge to sigh. Lately, it always seemed like one step forwards, two steps back with his power reserves.

He offered the hand to the youma. "I assure you, you will never get this offer from me again, so I certainly suggest you take me up on it... Alive, you are a spit in the eye of the creator of such a torture as the Sleep. Partake of my energy, and live."

* * *

The enervated youma looked at the man as he hopped around, putting on the second boot. There was hunger in their eyes; he'd given them all energy, and was still standing without any outward sign of the drain. If he could do that, then what if they drained him of all his energy? How powerful could they become? 

Some of them glanced over at the sleep crystals, the others getting the point from these looks. Fear did what common sense or honour should have, and told them that someone who could so easily break through such a powerful enchantment as the Sleep was to be handled very, very carefully.

"You freed us," one of the survivors, a purple insectoid-like youma of indeterminate sex, hissed after some hesitation. It struggled a bit with a concept, before it spoke again. "You saved us. We owe you. What would you have us do?"

The others looked at the creature, slightly shocked that it was admitting to the weakness of owing anybody anything. There was only one thing a Dark Kingdom youma was taught to owe, and that was payback.

Emerald looked up, having finally wrenched the matching boot on. He blinked, and looked at them. These youma were hardly cannon fodder; they were the ones who had survived the worst punishment their culture had to offer, after all. With a bit of rest, some food and some more energy, they would make for a formidable strike force.

It was actually tempting. It was very tempting.

No. No, if he had them fight, then they'd be doing it out of a sense of obligation. The thought of having someone risk their life just because they felt they owed you something left a bad taste in his mouth. It was one thing to kill them, maim them, drain them of their energy. But to have them fight his battles? Where was the justness in that?

"Do? Whatever you want to, you're quite free to decide."

Besides, he knew youma and other such creatures. He'd been friends with some; hells, he'd even loved one or two. But trust them? Sure, he'd trust them; trust them to betray him with the first chance they got. While a few youma had high honour codes, or other such ideals, a great deal of them were crafty, vicious, sly backstabbers who were only out for themselves. Maybe that's why he could get on with them when he wanted to; in the future, they were more human than most of the humans.

Not to mention the fact that he wasn't really much of a team player.

Anyway, this was not the future. The Senshi had no idea just how far they still had to go in their climb to power. Even at his low energy ebb, he'd be able to give them the shock of their lives. There was no ice or flamestorms here, no experienced hand to guide the ginzuisho. And he had one of the most effective powers of all: experience. Centuries of experience.

He didn't need an army, nor did he want one. Not in this timeline, anyway.

He swept his hair back, and looked at the youma as he considered exactly what to do next. "Wait, there is one thing you can help me with, if you are willing. I need a guide."

* * *

Prince Endymion paced around his spacious room, one arm set on the hilt of his sword to stop it from swinging. He'd never admit it out loud; not even to Queen Beryl, and certainly not to that fool, Kunzite, but he felt disquieted. 

He had returned, defeated, from yet another foray to Earth. The only problem was that no matter how he dressed it up for his queen, it shouldn't have been a defeat. The ginzuisho could have been his, if he had just let Kunzite's youma do its job and kill Sailor Moon. He was probably lucky that Queen Beryl found his honourable streak 'stimulating', he doubted that she would be so kind to Kunzite if their positions were reversed.

What was it about Sailor Moon? Why did she persist in her fantasies? Could she really believe that he, a warrior of the Dark Kingdom, would succumb to love!?

And what were those twinges, those uncertain flashes of something he felt when he was near her? There was something more about her, more than her being his enemy. If only he could think of what...

Without preamble, or warning, the door swung open. Endymion turned, to see a young man there, dressed in black trousers and a grimy white shirt - fairly unusual attire for the Kingdom. The man blinked his multi-hued green eyes, the only outward sign Endymion could see of a youma heritage, before he smiled somewhat mirthlessly.

"You're a hard man to find," the badly clad man noted. "Oh, I always did like that armour. So less pretentious, so much more practical than that foppish gear you usually prance around in."

"Who are you? What are you doing here, these are the Queen's personal quarters!"

"Why Endy-chan, dear brother-in-arms, I thought it obvious. I've come to rescue you."

"Rescue me?"

Ah. It was going to be one of those ones. Emerald resisted the urge to let his smile slip into a snarl. There was an energy taint to Endymion's aura that gave him a sneaking suspicion on what was wrong here.

Brainwashing. Gods, why does everyone have to use brainwashing?

It presented somewhat of a moral dilemma. He hated, he loathed any sort of mind-control. Once, just once he had even willingly allied with the Senshi against a conqueror who had enslaved the minds and wills of his soldiers. The alliance had lasted less than an hour and ended, quite predictably, in disaster, but still, the thought had been there.

On the other hand, he didn't like Prince Charmless here either. Surely, just once, the man could have held onto his own will? He was beginning to wonder if Endymion wanted to be brainwashed by 'dark and evil forces. Trying out the other side of the sheets, so to speak, without any of those niggling moral worries you got with free choice.

He bit back an almost reflexive insult, and concentrated on a mantra. Diplomacy. Diplomacy. Diplomacy. "Yes, rescue you. You know, take you back to the loving embrace of the Senshi?" Gods know they're welcome to you.

"You're with the Senshi? And you're here, in the heart of our kingdom." Endymion's eyes narrowed as he drew his sword. "You were that spy that the youma have been after!"

"Spy? Well, I suppose it's better than being labelled an assassin," the man noted, before he muttered, "yet again." He grimaced in an almost-smile. "I don't know, I think I'd like to be called a saboteur, just once, for originality's sake. Or perhaps a vandal, I can't remember ever being called a vandal."

"You're very flippant, but I'm not finding you all that funny. If you think you can challenge the Dark Kingdom with impunity, then I will be very glad to show you how wrong you are."

"Oh, I see, so that's how it is." The man turned slightly to eye the large bed that dominated the room, before returning his gaze to the prince. The gaze was starting to lose the thin veneer of friendliness he had maintained since walking into the room.

"That's a rather large bed for one. Sleeping your way to the top yet again, hmm? I must say, this is very amusing. I'm trying to help you, and you're still set against me. You're going to have the cleanest brain in the universe, Endymion, from all these washings. Now, you are coming back to Earth. I believe I must insist."

"I'm going nowhere with you, except straight to Queen Beryl. She will definitely want to speak to you."

"You mean speak at me. Typical ruler, it's all her, her, her."

Endymion felt the slightest cracks in his calm pose. "I have better things to do than to put up with this in my own room." The sword tip quivered slightly as Endymion pointed it at the man. "You ARE coming with me, or I will kill you and spare my Queen the effort."

The man looked down at the sword. "You know, I almost like you this way. So less... condescendingly righteous. But the thing we should remember here is that I don't like you. Scum, just like cream, rises to the top. You're a toadying worm with an inflated sense of your own self-worth, sleeping your way to power no matter which side you find yourself on. Let's face it, Endy, the Senshi may deserve a modicum of respect, but you just--"

The sword flicked forward in angry response with a light, probing blow.

* * *

Hmm... 

Well now, this was VERY interesting. Who knew that a simple aimless stroll could bring such interesting spectacles?

Kunzite remained in the shadows, looking through the open doorway at the two fighting men. Endymion might have the armour, a sword and the talent to use it, but the other one still seemed to be the more dangerous of the pair.

He blinked as the man sidestepped a sword blow, and put his fist through the wall right next to Endymion's head. When the man deflected Endymion's riposte with the other arm, which was momentarily wrapped in some sort of energy shield, Kunzite narrowed his eyes. Oh yes, this new man definitely seemed the more dangerous of the two.

He considered his options. If Endymion won with his help, it wouldn't matter. His position was getting too tenuous; helping Endymion would be seen as a sign of weakness, a sign of an inferior helping a superior. If the prince won whatever this fight was about without his help, then it would just be another point the upstart would use against him; just one of many the annoying Earther had used.

But if the other man won - and it looked like he might very well do that - well, wouldn't that be just a huge pity? Losing Endymion would be so heartbreaking. He wasn't sure how he could live with the prospect.

He smiled, turned, and left to make sure he was seen by several underlings somewhere else. After all, he had to spend some time recovering from the devastating prospect of Endymion dying.

His smile widened into an almost-grin as he quickly walked away.

* * *

Endymion wiped the sweat from his brow, careful not to impede his vision. His dark-born arrogance was taking a beating: for a man who claimed to be here to 'rescue' him, the green-eyed man certainly didn't mind using crippling attacks. 

And the worst of it was, he wasn't completely sure the man wasn't holding back. What had started out as an attempt to knock the spy out had quickly degenerated into a fight for survival... his survival.

He fingered a black rose, his eyes narrowing slightly. He couldn't lose. For his queen, for himself, and mostly for the snide comments Kunzite would give him if he did, he could not lose.

* * *

Emerald swayed, letting the thrust of Endymion's sword pass through where he had been, before he dropped into a leg sweep, which the prince managed to avoid by leaping back. 

This was no fun. He'd never really liked Endymion. The man had always seemed like an opportunist to him; clinging to those with more power like... like... like those things that clung to sharks. Mercury had so much of his respect that it sent chills through him. Mars, Venus, Jupiter, even Serenity, in a way, he could admire. But Endymion...? No, no he didn't respect Endymion.

Unfortunately, he'd never really had a good shot at him; Mr Swank was usually hanging off Serenity's arm, and whenever he got that close to Serenity, he had a far more important target in view than the queen's consort. Having the chance to pummel Endymion was a rare and pleasant opportunity indeed. But this was no fun, there was no joy in this; sword-boy simply didn't have the power to make this fight interesting.

That hurt, in more ways than one. He didn't like getting reminders of how the Senshi probably viewed him, for starters. And for seconds, he wanted to enjoy beating Endymion around a little - but truly, what joy was there in beating a half-wit with a brainwash-clouded mind?

He twisted, catching Endymion's swordarm, before he used his other arm to drive down on the prince's left shoulder armour, buckling it and sending the man to his knees. With a small smile, the green-eyed man spun out of range, ready for the next attack.

Endymion was undeniably skilled with his weapon, true. But against someone with his fighting experience, the prince would have to do something more than wave around a fancy kitchen knife to win. Well, that wasn't completely fair. Endymion had tried some sort of trick with one of his black roses, something involving charging energy through it. That had been fairly impressive - and it had drained a disturbing amount from his energy. Still and all, this fight was definitely his to take.

Yes, he didn't like Endymion. He didn't like his posturing, his annoying speeches, even his pretentious clothes. He didn't like what he had seen of the man over the years, didn't like his leeching, and to tell the truth, he didn't even like the way he had led Mars on, while doing his macho protector thing with Moon. Even if Moon DID turn out to be Serenity, that was only one less mark against him; so what if he didn't, in fact, betray Sailor Moon with Serenity? It wouldn't change the fact that Emerald didn't at all like him. In fact, he...

The sword slid into him, impaling just below the heart.

After the din of such cramped fighting, the sudden hush that enveloped the room seemed deafening. For an almost eternal second, the silence stretched. Both of the fighters looked down at the blade, before they looked up into each other's eyes.

Endymion let go of the sword, his gaze locking down onto the buried blade. Emotions warred with Metallia's taint, horror at killing his opponent warring against the dark pride of victory. A sudden urge to vomit clashed against a rising tide of sated blood lust. His soul cried out, threatening to tear apart from the internal war.

* * *

The blonde girl hunkered down, avoiding her teacher's gaze as the sensei asked another question. Finally, the academic danger past, the girl returned to her drawing - a man with a top hat, who was staring at a girl with twin ponytails. She started, realising that the picture had smudged somehow, leaving the man half-formed and blurry. 

The girl blinked, puzzled, and touched her fingertip to her eyes, bringing it away to stare at the single teardrop that lay there, glistening.

* * *

After a moment, his arm trembling, Emerald slowly reached down with his left hand, and pulled the blade out, his palm bleeding as the edges sliced at it. The sword made a slight shlupping sound as it exited. 

They both gazed at the blood smeared blade, dripping red liquid filled with green motes of energy, before it slipped out of his nerveless hand and clattered to the ground.

The green-moted blood didn't spurt, Endymion noted with detached curiosity. Oh, it flowed alright, but wasn't spurting how it was supposed to go when you pulled a sword out?

He looked back up into his enemy's eyes.

Fury smoked in the returning gaze, in an intensity that pierced through even the prince's dark-given arrogance. The anger broke against him like a tsunami. Compared to the hate in those eyes, he realised, Kunzite was a close and warm friend.

"I... will not... I _**refuse**_ to die... at your hands, you wormy little leech." Emerald clenched his fists, squinting his eyes as he fought against the pain. "You, 'friend', are a lot better," he gritted his teeth for a moment, before continuing, "than you should be this... this young in life."

He concentrated, closing the skin over his wound. It was all show; there was still a nigh-fatal hole inside him, and the wound would probably reopen in a few minutes, but for now it was the best way to shock Endymion into thinking that he was unbeatable.

He wiped the blood away, to show the unblemished skin underneath, before he looked up at his opponent, steeling his will so that he could act unaffected. "Mindwiping really does agree with you, it appears you're tapping talents you shouldn't have developed yet. Now, I admit I could have introduced myself better, but was stabbing me truly very nice?"

Endymion closed his mouth as he glanced at his blade to confirm that it really was covered in the man's blood. He looked into the man's odd eyes, and shook his head. "You're more than you appear. That should have been a mortal wound!"

"I don't recall claiming to be mortal." A booted toe kicked out, and the sword skittered underneath the bed. Emerald smiled grimly. "I do appreciate your lesson in the dangers of growing cocky, Endymion."

The slightest sheen of sweat formed on his brow as he dropped back into a fighting stance; it was taking a real effort to pretend that his wound was gone, and he couldn't afford to have the fight drag on again. It was time to treat Endymion like fighting the future's Mars or Jupiter or Venus. And if that meant that Serenity got back a corpse for a boyfriend, well, that would be just too bad. "Allow me to show you just how much I appreciate it..."

* * *

Queen Beryl leaned back in her throne, idly tossing thoughts of torturing Princess Serenity around in her head. Did that child think that she had any hopes with Prince Endymion, when he had a real woman who could offer him real power? What was a childish puppy love compared to the dark desire of passion between two near-equals? 

The voice of Queen Metallia slashed through her, jolting the queen out of her reverie.

**SOMETHING IS WRONG. SOMETHING IS GOING WRONG WITH ENDYMION**.

A moment later, the throne was empty.

* * *

Emerald leaped out of the shadows, skidding to a halt amongst the sleep crystals. He was breathing hard, the unconscious Endymion over his shoulder. There had been a spy on his fight with the prince, so it surely wouldn't be long before Beryl interceded. It was time to show the wiser part of valour. 

One of the freed youma looked up from a sack he had his muzzle in, a puzzled look on his face. "Bring him," he pointed at Endymion, "for us?"

"No." He looked at the sack. "What's that?"

"Food," the youma replied with a grunt. "Easy to get when you not weak." Most of the survivors of the sleep had endured through the active use of their intellect. However, there was always one...

Emerald snatched the sack, ignoring the youma's annoyed look. "Fine, fine." He then crouched, picking up a bundle of clothes he had left ready. The green haired man stepped back to the shadows cast by some of the crystals, and turned to face the motley group of youma. "Come on, we have to get out of here. Link your teleport magic with mine."

"Why should we?" another of the youma waved dismissively. "With our power back, we don't have to--"

The fur, hair, and in some cases cartilage on the backs of their necks prickled. Seething over the plain came a voice that terrified the youma - youma that had survived the worst in terror punishment their culture had.

**WHAT IS THIS? WHO SULLIES MY DOMAIN? WHO DEFIES ME?**

Emerald winced. The youma's energy goddess, he presumed. So far he'd been lucky; his aura hiding abilities had probably shielded him from her gaze.  
Endymion, unfortunately, was not possessed of such talents.

It didn't take more than a moment to consider his options. He was not anywhere near enervated or stupid enough to take on something like that. The green eyed man looked at the youma, and shrugged. "Goodbye."

The youma didn't hesitate. They leapt at him, desperately linking their powers to his, teleporting out as he did. Even the insane courage of the Dark Kingdom had limits, after all.

* * *

**v\v/v**

_CTIS broadcast, 13 January 2409, 18:03:_

Reporting for the Crystal Tokyo Information Service, this is Aino Minako. I'm here at the Crystal Tokyo Auditorium where tonight horror stalked one of our greatest stars.

- Greatest star? It was someone in a damn rabbit suit!

-- Shh! Jupiter! We're in the shot, they might hear us!

- Don't worry, Mars, you need those microphones or something to pick up conversations for the camera. See, Minako's using one.

-- I can't believe we agreed to stand here for her like glorified cardboard cutouts.

Ah... yes. Yes as most of the good people of our fair city are already aware, tonight the vile villain most know as the Outsider infiltrated these fine walls and ripped the hopes and joys out of the hearts of a million people, forever blackening the name... of Mr Fluffy the Friendly Bunny.

- She's lost it. Mina-chan's getting more eccentric than Ami.

-- It's the entertainment industry, I think she's been in it a little too long. And the rabbit show was her brainchild - you know how she was about it.

KNOWN as the lovable star of Mr Fluffy's Friendship Frolics, Mr Fluffy was kidnapped just before he was due to play the special Thousandth episode of his show. In his place, the dastardly Outsider pretended to be Mr Fluffy, shocking viewers with his evil vitriol.

-- I think we have to talk to Minako after this. Her word choices are leaving a little something to be desired.

- Have you figured out why he did it yet?

-- Either to strike a blow against a show he thought was brainwashing children into conformity, or to annoy us. Probably both.

Luckily, the two... fine Senshi behind me, the Ladys Jupiter and Mars, along with Lady Venus, capably stopped the man without injury to the hostage audience, once and for all.

- It's a real pity about those two that were helping him. They were just kids!

-- So were we, once. They chose their path. Still, I saw his eyes before he escaped. He won't bring the defenceless to a fight ever again.

- Again? You saw the damage Venus did to him. It's just like half our other foes. He left to die somewhere, alone.

-- No. I saw his eyes. He won't die. He's different to the rest; his fight is personal, and he won't fold.

Regretfully, Sailor Venus announced earlier that there were no plans to continue with the Mr Fluffy series. His name, along with his lovable companions, has been forever darkened by the evil of one man's selfishness. Mr Fluffy... is cancelled.

- At least something good has come of this. Oh God, Fluffy's companions. They were obviously modelled on us.

-- At least you got 'Poko the Protective Palomino'. What did I get? 'Rachel the Rascally Raven'!

- I'm just thankful Saturn isn't still alive to see 'Hako the Health-Conscious Hamster'.

-- I would have handed her the glaive myself if she was.

And so, we here at Crystal Tokyo would like to give Mr Fluffy a heartfelt goodbye, and remember him for what he truly was...

- A man in a bunny suit?

-- Shh! She'll hear us!

Ahem. Remember him for what he truly was, and not what one man turned him into. Mr Fluffy, we salute you, friendly bunny. And so, as the last of the unfortunate live audience are escorted from the Auditorium, we only have time for a few more words...

-- ...Okay, Jupiter, I admit it. This time, he won.

- Yeah. But they all get to win one. Most of them don't last long enough to win two, though. Hey, why is the cameraman looking at us like that?

Join me next time, when I'll give a detailed report on new magic being used in the holographic recording arena, which allows one to do away with microphones except as a prop.

- Oh.

-- Ah... Don't fret citizens, this was merely a trap laid to snare the Outsider.

- No-one would believe th--

This is Aino Minako saying goodnight, and happy dreams.

**v\v/v**

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

For old readers of this story, please note that this chapter is not new, it is the second half of chapter 6a. New material will be covered in chapter 8 onwards.

**v\v/v** will denote Crystal Tokyo era Senshi journals/recording. Normal Emerald journals will be shown as usual( **-#-** )

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use.

* * *

**-#- **

The paradox of Crystal Tokyo's peace is... well, a polite word for it would be intriguing. The city's internal peace is built upon a lie - the lie of pure conformity. And its peace from external sources is just as... 'intriguing'.

Peace through superior firepower - sometimes quite literally - seems quite out-of-step with the Crystal ethos. And yet, in the end, that's all it truly amounts to. The average serf in that pretty eyesore doesn't realise how often they've come to the edge.

Their peace-everlasting, their glorious civilisation, their wonder of the ages, their beauteous feudal throwback... what a joke! So insular, so insulated, so unaware they are. I doubt that city has gone more than ten years without at least a couple of demons trying their luck at invading it; but the average drone would never know of it because, to be quite honest with myself, they've got the best protectors in this and possibly any galaxy.

The four mighty Senshi, strong pillars without whose support the city would crumble. One godlike queen, in more than word alone she and her power IS the city. The Time Guardian, her protection drawn like a stifling, invisible cloak over the metropolis. Their Royal Guard, their army, the mortar that stops things like me seeping through the cracks.

I'm not sure where Endymion fits into the building analogy. Perhaps that brainwash-bait is the outhouse or something. Ah well, he does serve as a good distraction for the invaders who have kidnap fetishes. Just goes to show that even a fifth wheel on a unicycle has its uses.

Together, intertwined, they are the city. Not the magic minerals that compose its bones, nor the mindnumb subhumans that populate it. No. No, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Pluto, Mars, Serenity: they are the city. These warriors are the peace.

And yet, how can people of war 'be' the peace? Quite the conundrum.

Still, seeing peace, or a reasonable illusion of such, built upon the shoulders of those of war leaves a question hanging, one that is more a curiosity than anything else, but still nags away on quiet nights such as this one.

If these warriors were encased with all of us, as I know they were, if Pluto cannot interfere well enough to act the role, then who protected the Earth during the Great Ice? Who ensured there was still an Earth there for Serenity to enslave when she freed herself? Who?

- Journal entry, early 2600, found in the keeping of a small village of youma in Western Australia. As to who protected the Earth during the Ice, it seems certain that an iceball would not have been much of a prize to any energy marauders.  
-- Maybe, but... well, in the end, only Pluto knows.

**-#- **

* * *

In a dark, grimy alley of Tokyo, there was a gentle whuff of air as eleven creatures materialised. Three of the youma collapsed, and another two disintegrated, fatally drained from the rash dimensional teleport. 

"So this is Earth," one of the still-standing youma noted, trying to forget the religious experience of being gazed on by its goddess by looking around at the dirty concrete walls that surrounded them. "This is the 'beautiful' world spoken of in the legends!?"

"Beautiful?" Emerald queried as he casually dropped his human cargo, before tearing a strip of cloth from Endymion's cape, using it to staunch the slowly congealing blood from his reopened wound. "No, not really. But one day, this place will be beautiful. And on that day, it will never be uglier. To judge a place or person by 'beauty'... ha! That way lies only delusion of the worst kind."

Another youma nodded. "Beauty is for fools. Strength and energy is all we need to create a perfect world."

Emerald grimaced. He was in too much pain to listen to youma muscle-flexing. "A perfect world is a dead world, in one way or another. It's the flaws that make life worth living." He looked around. "You all have to get out of this city. There are too many psychics in this part of the world capable of detecting your kind, you will die if you remain. In fact, if you stick around I'll kill you myself - you are complications I do not want hanging over my head."

He grunted as he picked up Endymion. "One last thing. I'm most forgetful, and to tell the truth, I am not the nicest person to be around. If I meet you again, and do not remember you, then run, or I will kill you. That's just how it is. Welcome to Earth. Here's hoping that your stay is not a short one."

He smiled, shrugged, and disappeared into the shadows.

The youma looked at each other.

"What now?" one asked.

"We grow strong off the humans' energy, of course," another replied, glancing at the collapsed youma. She paused to think about their saviour's threat, her eyes shifting to the two dustpiles of her fallen comrades. "...Somewhere else."

* * *

Queen Beryl knew how to rule, and rulers delegated. Right now, she was delegating blame. 

"Why do I think you have something to do with this unforgivable intrusion, Kunzite?"

"My queen? I do not--"

"You do not what!? You do not search for my prince when he has been taken? Is that what you do not?"

Kunzite bowed to hide his anger. Beryl was in one of those moods. Many an unfortunate youma had gone to the Sleep thanks to one of 'those moods'. Of course it wasn't her fault Endymion was gone. It was never her fault. "My queen, I meant to say that I do not wish to merely stand around. Please, allow me to search for Prince Endymion as well."

* * *

The energy-being known as Metallia wasn't wasting her time with meaningless recriminations or petty blame - there'd be time for that after the Earth prince was returned to her. Endymion was important to her plans; as the Earth's prince, he held certain connections to the planet's mana, much as the Senshi did to their own worlds. With him kneeling before her, his planet was sure to follow. 

Her subjects could waste their time running around like the headless chickens they were. The kidnapper was intriguingly stealthy. But she had given a small part of her power to shape the dark Prince Endymion. He was her puppet, not Beryl's, and he could not be hidden from her.

It was time to take back that which was hers.

* * *

Hino Rei walked into her temple's grounds after another school's day. It had been a pretty good one; that maths test hadn't been as bad as she'd feared, and Hinachi-sensei had called in sick, so now that history assignment wouldn't be due until tomorrow. Spending all your spare time saving the world from vicious youma was a good thing and all that, but it didn't work very well as an excuse for not completing your homework. 

Usagi would laugh herself silly if she found out that she close to flunking some subjects because of senshi-ing... well, sillier anyway. With a small snort, Rei ducked into the temple's private quarters, sliding the door closed behind her. She leant against the door for a few seconds, before she realised that something was a little out of place.

Emerald looked up from the task of winding a bandage around his chest. He'd already fixed his hand and his other wounds, and attended to Endymion. After all, Mars would have been furious if he hadn't at least set the man's arm. "I hope you don't mind company, Rei. We can come back if you feel like being alone."

"What in..." Rei shook her head. It was a dream - it had to be a dream. Her gaze drifted past Emerald to the couch. "Mamoru...?" She rushed over to her unconscious boyf... former boyfriend, checking his wounds. "How did he get here? What happened to him!?"

He ducked when he should have weaved. "The Kingdom's ruler did not take my breaking into her dimension well, and it appears that her wrath can sometimes be directed towards youma and others under her command. My impromptu prison break proved to be most damaging to me and my illustrious comrade over there."

She stared at him. "Are you INSANE!? You went to the Dark Kingdom by yourself? What, do you think you're immortal? You can't just waltz into the enemy's stronghold without backup! What were you thinking? WERE you thinking?"

His lips parted in a genuine smile, and his strange eyes seemed to sparkle. It was the first time she had ever looked into his gaze and not felt uncomfortable.

"You're welcome," he said, as his smile widened into a grin. "Never lose that fire, Rei. It's... so much your soul." He finished tying off the chest bandage, carefully flexing his body to make sure it wouldn't snap easily from his enhanced strength.

She shook her head, fighting the flush on her face. "You should have taken us with you."

He blinked. "I didn't mean to steal your thunder."

"That's not it! Look at him," she pointed down to the unconscious Mamoru, "look at you! If we had of gone together, we could have got out with no-one hurt."

Emerald sighed. "Let's just say that I am not a team player, and leave it there. Never worked well in a command structure, and all that. Rei. you wanted him back. Dwelling on the woulds, coulds, or shoulds is the task of an eternity. Leave it be, and be happy that he is safe."

It was her turn to sigh. "I have to call the others. This is the best opportunity we'll have to heal Tuxedo Kamen of his dark hold."

"Ah yes. Healing." It took all his willpower not to add a sarcastic twinge to the word. He grimaced slightly as he tightened the bandage, before tying it off. Luckily, she had taken long enough to get here that he had managed to cover up all his wounds, and, more importantly, any evidence of his non-human blood. While he had long since thought of an explanation for his blood, and even for surviving such a wound, he didn't really want another reason for the girl to be suspicious of him. There seemed to be enough already.

Rei turned her communicator off, her ears aching from the shocked screech Usagi had given off when told the news. She put it away, and turned to her uninvited guest. "Now, maybe you can tell me... the portal you used to get to the Dark Kingdom. Where is it? Even with Tuxedo Kamen rescued, we have to be able to take the fight to them. Without a way to get there, we can't do anything but wait for them to attack us again and again."

"It's... not easy to explain. I didn't need to find a portal, because I don't teleport like you do. I never have. You will have to find your own way there."

"There has to be something you can--"

The Dark Energy that suffused Endymion felt the calling of its mistress. A moment later, the unconscious prince teleported out, leaving behind two people who were suddenly experiencing one of those sort of silences.

Emerald resisted the urge to slap his hand onto his forehead in a gesture of disbelief. How utterly typical. Somehow he wasn't surprised that it hadn't been that easy to steal Endymion. And to think he had been impaled to get that idiot just for this... He blinked, realising he had to watch his reactions with Mars present, and changed his expression from seething indignation to righteous anger and worry.

"We were so close..." Rei whispered to herself, forgetting that he was there. She stared at the empty bed.

"Rei-chan..." He hesitated, trying to think of something suitably sympathetic sounding. "This is bad, true. But there is always, always another day. Today, we almost had him. And tomorrow...?" Tomorrow, Endymion could burn in his own personal hell. After what he had gone through. after being run through, he had no desire to try to rescue the pretentious rose-thrower again.

She looked at him, surprised at the fire in his voice. Finally, she nodded.

"You're right. We will get him back. We will."

He considered replying, but pain had eroded his diplomatic patience. Finally, he nodded to her, turned to leave and find a place to heal.

"You're going out like that?" she pointed to him.

He looked down; his blood-soaked shirt had been tossed before he even got here - the glow of his blood was a little too attention garnering to leave it lying where the Senshi could find. Grimy trousers and scuffed shoes were all that were left of his clothes. He missed his cloak; some helpful park attendant had probably thrown it into the rubbish long ago.

"Don't worry." He looked up at her. "I have some new clothes nearby."

* * *

He walked outside, reaching the temple steps before life got that little bit worse. 

A portal of dark energy opened five meters away. Two ravens, perched on a nearby prayer gate, took flight at the sight of the unnatural opening. A moment later, a man and a woman stepped out of the portal.

Emerald's eyes narrowed. The woman was a typical youma with a typical human-illusion glamour - typically boring. The man was something far more interesting. He recognised the aura: the person who spied on his battle with Endymion, the one who had left without interfering. He tried to remember what the youma loremaster had told him, and hazarded a guess. "Kunzite, I presume?"

Kunzite nodded. "And you are the person who has caused my queen a great deal of vexation. It wasn't very wise, kidnapping one of Queen Metallia's own, she is not one you should have ever crossed."

"Yes, well, I guess I'm not a very wise man." Avenues of attack and escape were calculated, as he thought of ways to ensure that he wasn't hit in the big target that was his bandaged chest. "If it worried you so, why did you not interfere in my fight?"

Kunzite raised an eyebrow, casting a glance at his silent companion. Admitting to blackmailable material in front of a youma was a deadman's path, no matter how much he wanted to congratulate the man on his 'rescue'  
of Endymion. It was almost a pity he had to kill him, from the brief glimpse he'd caught of the prince before Beryl sent him here, the green man had real Dark Kingdom potential.

To avoid answering, the general looked around. "A temple, isn't it? Why did you bring him here?"

"The dark energy taint reaches to his very soul. His corporeal wounds were nothing compared to the horror of mind control. At a temple, the evil within him could be exorcised." Emerald felt a deep stab of pride at managing to keep a completely straight face during the decidedly hokey explanation.

"A pity," Kunzite noted. "For a moment there, after your foray into the Kingdom, I thought you might be different. But with a speech like that, I realise that you're just another Senshi toady, like Endymion was."

Emerald couldn't help it. He burst out laughing at the absurdity of the insult.

* * *

The two birds flapped their wings and cried out loudly, franticly. 

Rei's eyes narrowed as she rushed over to open the glass pane.

* * *

Two opponents was too many. 

The green energy beam had punched through the youma before Emerald had fully stopped laughing. Kunzite looked at the dustpile that had been his companion, angered at how quickly it had died.

"You are a very annoying man. I can see why Zoicite didn't like you."

Emerald shrugged. "Being disliked is hardly new for me." His eyes darted around, the lack of white in the orbs helping to slightly mask his glances. Taking on Kunzite would be stupid, especially after the energy he'd wasted on Endymion and on killing that youma just now. If he didn't rest and let his wound heal, he would be in serious trouble.

And he could sense Mars's aura coming towards them - not surprising since they were fighting on her doorstep. If she intervened, things would just get complicated. Mars probably couldn't take Kunzite on by herself, not yet, and if she was killed... Well, he still didn't know if she was right about Serenity's identity. Until he was, he couldn't afford any of the Senshi dying off.

Just teleporting away wouldn't be enough - then Mars would engage Kunzite before the general thought to leave. Action had to be taken, and taken now.

"If you want me, you have to catch me." His hands snapped up, palms outstretched as he turned his head away and screwed his eyes shut. There was a flash of blinding green light.

Kunzite cursed, blinking his eyes. When his eyesight had restored, the green-eyed man was a distant speck on the road below the temple steps. The man was either quicker than he looked, or else he'd used teleportation. The general scowled. If the man thought that teleportation would impress a Dark Kingdom general, he was sorely and foolishly mistaken.

"You don't escape that easily, green man."

* * *

Rei ran out of the temple's private quarters. That flash of light had turned a worried walk into a headlong dash. Her eyes widened when she saw Kunzite standing at the top of the temple's steps. 

"You don't escape that easily, green man."

By the time the first word of her transformation phrase had passed from brain to mouth, he was gone in the flash of a teleportation effect. She blinked, cancelling her attack. Green man? The Dark Kingdom general must have followed Emerald. And if that smug idiot was half as hurt as those bandages he was wearing indicated...

She rushed forward, reaching the top of the stairs, searching for a sign of which way Kunzite had chased Emerald. Nothing, she had no idea which way to go. Her eyes trailed to a figure in the distance. The figure rapidly grew closer, reaching and then bounding up the stairs, determination apparently overriding the usually clumsy movements. Rei's thoughts of chase were momentarily forgotten at the dread of the figure's inevitable first words.

Usagi stumbled against Rei to stop her headlong flight, gasping raggedly from her marathon sprint. "Where is he? Where is he!? Rei, where's Mamo-chan?"

Great. For once, she actually had to be early! Rei cringed inside as she faced her leader, preparing for the inevitable emotional outcry when Usagi heard the news.

* * *

Beryl stared down at Endymion, who was rejuvenating in a Dark capsule. She was, it was safe to say, more than a little angry. Someone had hurt her Endymion. The dark energy would heal him in no time, true, but the fact remained. 

Someone had hurt her Endymion. And she would make sure to do far, far worse to that someone.

Kunzite cursed, looking around a deserted intersection. It almost made you appreciate the Senshi. Certainly, they were annoyingly lucky young girls with penchants for ridiculous posturing and speeches, but at least they stood and fought!

His face set into a mask as he summoned a portal back to the Dark Kingdom. There was no point in staying, the man had gotten away. If he fought half as well as he ran away, then perhaps that explained how the man had beaten Endymion so handily.

One thing was certain. Beryl would not be pleased about this.

* * *

Emerald smiled, stepping out of the shadows into a forgotten sidestreet. It was endemic, it seemed, for people who chased him to bluster about how he would never get away, how they would find him, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam. Really; he had six hundred years practice at running away. He'd always been a warrior of the shadows and when it came to avoiding overconfident lackeys like Kunzite, there simply was no effort involved. 

The onerous task of freeing Endymion, while a failure, was still over. Beryl and Metallia could rage at him all they wanted; they had no way to find him - the gods knew they'd be wasting their time trying to scry for him. Finally, now that all the distractions were gone, he could get to work.

He brought his hand up, letting a soft greenish-white light glow, banishing the shadows of the small, rubbish-filled lane. Bending down, he reached behind an old bin to pick up the folded clothes he had left there before accosting Sailor Mars. With a grunt, he straightened, leaning against the bin for a moment for support.

His smile faded as he looked at the clothes. It was time to have a little talk with Sailor Moon.

"I hope that Mars was wrong, girl."

His eyes narrowed, looking at his hand as he clenched it to a fist. Green light glowed around the clenched fingers. Slowly, the energy's colour darkened, finally setting into a nauseous shade, so green that in most lights you'd swear it was black. There. One less thing for the Senshi to identify him by.

"For your sake, child, I truly do."

* * *

Makoto looked around at the darkening sky as Ami bowed goodbye to the librarian. After a minute or two of mutual silence, as they walked down the street, she turned to her blue-haired friend. "Ami, thanks for helping me with my schoolwork." She hesitated, then added, "Are you ok? You've seemed a little distracted since I met up with you. If you didn't want to help me, I'm okay with--" 

Ami shook her head quickly. "Oh no, Mako-chan, it's not you." She reached into her schoolbag, and pulled out her computer. "Since we're looking for a portal to the Dark Kingdom, I've set my computer to scan for unusual energy patterns or incursions by youma. Today, right in the middle of English, it warned me of several Dark Kingdom energy signatures."

Ami managed to avoid wincing as she drew a breath to continue. Her computer had warned her by blaring out an alarm, which hadn't gone over at all well with her teacher. It had been very embarrassing. "I couldn't investigate it because of school. It's just," she paused. "I hope this isn't a new trend by the Dark Kingdom. What if they always start appearing while we're at school?"

"I guess we start cutting class then!" Makoto laughed at her joke.

Ami didn't. "...Yes. I suppose."

* * *

He looked around. A park. Yes, yes, a park was perfect. Except for the chairs and lampposts-- 

He calmly wrenched the nearest lamppost from the ground, heaving it into the distance. The nearby late night strollers, who had already been looking at him with suspicion, took this as a cue to scream and run away. Parkgoing in this area of town was starting to feel like a bit of a deathsport.

--Yes, except for them, the park was perfect. A wide area, with the only cover being trees - which, like all living things, gave off an aura. An important point, considering how much he would be relying on his mystical senses over the coming night.

He gritted his teeth as he lifted a bench, his wound aching at the effort. After walking with it for a short while, he dumped it. After returning, knocking out a too-brave lawnskeeper on the way, he tossed all the other lampposts and a bin or two until there were no obstructions but bushes and trees nearby.

He nodded, looking around. Yes, perfect. Now that the grunt work was out of the way...

He untied a black ribbon from his wrist, securing it over his eyes as a makeshift blindfold.

He turned around a few times, getting used to the blindfold, before he settled into a wide-legged stance. Now then, what was the tradition for a pretentious 'villain' of these times? Ah yes, a semi-rambling dissertation on how much energy was being collected for their master, and how the Senshi would 'never find me here'. Of course, that usually brought them out of the woodwork.

He thought about it and then shrugged. He could only put up with so much bad theatre. He'd skip the speech, and hopefully get right to the Senshi-coming-out-of-the-woodwork bit. He smiled, flinging his arms wide out, and began to draw in the elemental mana as fast and hard as he could.

* * *

"Ami... are you beeping?" 

Ami blinked, shaking herself out of a reverie. She reached into her schoolbag, and pulled out her Mercury computer.

"I'm reading an anomaly." She stuck her tongue against the inside of her mouth as her fingers danced across the keys. "This isn't like anything I've seen before from the Dark Kingdom." Two more taps on the computer's keys, and then she turned to her taller companion. "Can you call the others and tell them to get to the park near here? I think we may have something important."

"Sure." Makoto nodded, her face puzzled. "But what are you going to do?"

There was just the briefest flush of embarrassment, before the blue-haired girl pointed to a telephone booth. "I have to tell my mother that I'll be late for dinner."

* * *

Sailor Jupiter turned to Sailor Mercury. 

"Okay, what is that?"

Mercury blinked, raising herself a little more from the cover the trees provided. "At a guess, I would say that it is the 'horrid monster' that the groundskeeper we found was yelling about."

In the middle of the park stood a humanoid probably clad in grey. It was hard to tell, since it was covered in perhaps a hundred black, ragged ribbons tied to arms, legs, and waist. A dozen strips of the torn cloth covered the face and eyes, leaving only a small slit for the mouth uncovered. Small ribbons wrapped around fingers and hands to create makeshift, tattered gloves.

The night air around the Senshi was dead still. But around the creature, there must have been a breeze: the thing's ribbons swayed and swirled like angered snakes. If that wasn't strange enough, the air seemed to be almost distended, unnaturally warping around the raggedy-man.

It sure wasn't human, and it was sure weird, even for a youma.

Mercury looked down at her computer, then looked back up at the creature, before she returned her gaze to the machine. For once, it wasn't being very helpful. The readings kept spiking and dropping, leaving it hard to make any conclusions. About the only thing she could tell was...

"It's draining energy..."

Jupiter cocked her head up to look around. There wasn't another soul in sight. "Draining energy? From what?"

Mercury took a few moments to answer, as she was trying to make sense of her computer readings. Finally, she looked to her companion. "From everything. The air, the ground... all the elements. It's taking it from everything."

"They don't need to get it from humans any more?" Jupiter shook her head. "We're in trouble."

The creature turned its blindfolded head to stare directly at them. "You may be right," Ami agreed.

* * *

Well, these two weren't who he was hoping would turn up first. He considered retreat, and then discarded the idea. Chances were that no matter where he went, the leader would be fashionably late. It seemed like you only encountered Sailor Moon first when you didn't want to. Here was as good as anywhere to stand and wait, and it wouldn't do his image as a nasty youma any good if he ran away. 

He stalked towards the Senshi, the silence of the moment broken by the black cloth strips fluttering around him. Before he was halfway there, they were out in the open, spouting a speech - a bad one, even by their standards.

He started to jog.

At a quarter of his original distance, Jupiter brought forth her lightning, searing against his blackish green energy shield, warping and crackling around him. There was that moment, that smallest moment of hesitation as the Senshi saw their first attack fail. His lips drew back from his teeth slightly in a snarling smile.

Yesssssss...

He pushed himself forward, dark bandages whipping around him, as he ran.

* * *

"He's spotted us." 

"How? He's wearing a blindfold!"

"Perhaps the blindfold is just a ruse," Mercury suggested.

"Ruse or not," Jupiter noted as the humanoid started to walk towards them, "we gotta stop it."

The two Senshi leaped out of their cover, landing shoulder-to-shoulder, on an angle so that their backs were slightly touching against each other.

"For disturbing the peace of late night lovers' strolls," Jupiter began.

Mercury picked up the speech "And for defiling the very elements of nature, Sailors Mercury,"

"And Jupiter,"

"Will not forgive you!" The Senshi finished the sentence together.

The youma didn't seem intimidated. In fact, as soon as the girls were finished, it sped up, from a walk to a slow jog, its blinded face staring directly at them.

"Alright," Jupiter scowled, "if that's how you want it." Her tiara crackled with elemental magic as she called for her lightning. "Supreme Thunder!"

The electricity arced at the youma, sizzling and crackling as it washed against a sickly dark energy shield. The shield flickered slightly, the lightning's light giving it a lighter, almost green shade, before her attack petered out.

In response, the youma began to run, aiming itself right at her.

Jupiter hesitated, trying to decide whether she had time for another power attack, before settling with a defensive stance.

Mercury hesitated, her arms halfway through the opening stance for calling her fog. Was the youma blind, and using other senses to navigate? Perhaps smell or hearing? If it was, would her attack do any good?

Time ran out, the creature's fast gait destroying the distance between it and its opponent. The youma rose its hand, palm forward. Jupiter's eyes drifted to it, her muscles bunched as she started to leap out of the way of what would probably be some sort of magical attack.

Horribly bright light flashed from the palm, a searing white that held the faintest lime corona. For a moment the darkened park, ill-lit due to the removed lampposts, glowed brighter than day.

Jupiter gasped, stumbling, her vision reduced to dancing black spots against white. She blindly stumbled to one side, trying to get out of the way of whatever follow-up the creature might have. Although she could not see it, the creature hesitated too, shaking its head as it kept its dark shield up for protection- obviously its blindfold had not completely saved it from damage.

"Sailor Jupiter!" Mercury desperately gathered her powers; the youma was affected by its own blinding power: that meant it really could see with that blindfold on. Still, their assailant had protected its eyes with its cloth, it would surely recover its eyesight, or whatever it had, before Jupiter did. "Shabon Spray!"

There, two could play at that game. Now, it would be blind as well.

* * *

Stars danced in his eyes, disrupting his special sight. He stood there, his shield protecting him, as one-by-one the stars supernovaed, dying out to leave him with the comfort of darkness. 

The cold tendrils of Mercury's attack poured over him, pawing at him, sending an involuntary shudder through his frame. For now, just for now, he ignored it, as he tore ribbons from along his waist and legs.

* * *

Mercury looked at the beast with confusion, as she started to sneak her way towards the blinded Jupiter. Why had it ripped at its clothes like that? Was it some sort of sign of frustration? 

Her stomach sank slightly as the youma turned its head, unerringly zeroing in on her companion. It could see. It could see through her fog.

"Sailor Jupiter, look out!"

* * *

He dashed forward, the ribbons in his hands swirling patterns through the dead air of Mercury's mist. 

Jupiter's first attack was clumsy, useless, truly blind desperation. The second, made while still off-balanced from the first, came closer but did no better. The third was never completed, as black cloth wrapped tightly around her wrists and legs and mouth like steel-twined rope.

Mars could have burnt off the bindings. Venus had her lasers. Mercury could have frozen them until they were brittle. But Jupiter - the only one who could consistently beat him in hand-to-hand combat - Jupiter could not power through these bonds so easily.

As she overbalanced, her tightly wrapped arms and legs trying desperately to break free and flail, he stepped back, ducking into a balanced crouch. There was a breathless second, and then the ponytailed brunette fell to the grass, her slowly-clearing eyes narrowed in rage and embarrassment.

She'd break free, of course. Only a fool would be smug enough to think a downed Senshi was to be no longer considered in the fight. But for now, she was sufficiently... inconvenienced.

* * *

**v\v/v**

_Diary Entry, Lady Jupiter. 20:16 05 September, 2499. Encrypted for personal use only._

I'm terrified.

I watched as they buried Kenji today. He was supposed to have an easy job; lookout at the city's edge. He didn't worry about a cloaked man approaching him, didn't think twice about the danger of challenging the stranger. He was too trusting, even for this town, and now he's dead. The fiftieth of my Royal Guard to be killed at Emerald's hands, and I'm scared.

I'm scared, terrified of what I might become. I can feel the anger bubbling inside of me, I just want to lash out. I want to hunt Emerald down to the ends of the Earth, and I want to hit him, pound him, pour my power through him until even that vampire screams for no more. I want to kill him.

The man can't be tracked with scrying, Mercury still hasn't found a way to overcome his hiding abilities with science - pure or magically aided. One minute he's in Europe, the next it's the Americas. It's so damn frustrating - he's a man who can hide in an empty room, and he's got an entire world to sneak around in. It's been, what, two hundred years since the...

Two hundred years? My god, has it been two hundred years since the Ice already? I can't believe I...

...Anyway, the Senshi are just about the only ones left who remember Emerald from before. He was abrasive, arrogant, and all too ready to put others down, but damn he was handy to have on your side. Even back then, people weren't calling him by his 'superhero name'... what was it? The Crystal Huntsman, yeah, that was it.

Everyone else, good and bad, called him the Wraith. Gave me the willies the first time I saw him melt out of the shadows - I came this close to mistaking him for a youma, and electrocuting him. Huh, if only I had. He's the worst thing we could hope for - an assassin who can't be soul-healed, who sure doesn't die easy, who's as immortal as us...

That's the problem. Pluto warned us when we were setting up the city, she said that immortals needed to find purpose, needed to find something to obsess over. She was right, I can see it in the others. Ami's taken the pursuit of science to stupid levels, Mina hasn't stopped to rest since we got out of the Ice, and Rei...

I don't know what the hell Rei does, but I know she does something.

I want to give into the anger. I really want to. But if I did, I'd be just like him. Always hunting and plotting and dreaming of someone's death... chasing a wraith in the shadows of the world.

Hell no, I can't stomach that idea. If this city can discard anger, then so can I.

But I'm not going to mourn any more of my own either.

Computer: New standing orders for the Guard. No-one is to approach the energy vampire known either as the Outsider or Emerald, without express command from myself, Neo-Queen Serenity, or one of the other Senshi. Avoid at all costs, except in cases where human life is at stake. From now on people, he's in Lady Mars's jurisdiction. All new data on the man should be turned over to her as soon as possible. End new standing orders.

Well, you wanted him Rei, and he's all yours. Although why you'd want that--

Oh wait, damn... stupid recording. Computer, end diary log.

**v\v/v**

* * *

The youma, or whatever it was, stood, shivering slightly in the cold fog. It turned its head slowly, too slowly, until its cloth-covered eyes were staring right at her. Then, it slowly rose its right hand and pointed at her. Just pointed, it didn't make any threatening move or other gesture. But when the ribbons around its wrist stopped fluttering around, and started pointing at her too, she couldn't help but feel a small shiver up her spine. 

No enemy, let alone one that covered its eyes like it was blind, had ever been able to see through her fog before. And it had already incapacitated Sailor Jupiter, a far better fighter than her. She might be in some trouble.

"I wouldn't be adverse to some aid right about now," she whispered, backing away so that she could keep some distance between her and the creature.

The creature cocked its head, and grimly smiled.

* * *

Emerald grimly smiled, doing his best to keep from shaking. Mercury! It just had to be Mercury, didn't it!? Things couldn't be easy, Moon couldn't be among the first group to turn up. No! That would have been something good, and nothing good ever happened to him! 

Argh. He knew that the girl he faced wasn't quite the Senshi of Ice yet. He knew that this quite chilly, if relatively ineffective fog was her only offensive magical attack. He knew that he could break her in half without even breaking a sweat. Logically, he knew he had little to fear from her.

But all his instincts knew, was that this was Mercury.

It was all he could do to keep his pointing finger steady.

For all the gods' sakes, why couldn't Sailor Moon hurry the hell up and get here!?

* * *

Sailor Jupiter furiously strained against her bonds. If nothing else, she hoped that her struggles would take the man, the youma's, whatever the hell it was's attention away from Sailor Mercury. 

She let out a muffled shout which, unfortunately, the creature completely ignored. Mercury, bless her, was still calm. But Ami's only attack had already proven useless, and if the others didn't come soon...

She turned a scream of frustration into another attempt to distract the ribboned creature. This was so humiliating. It was one thing to be blasted by some youma or another; but to get trussed up like a helpless pig was, well, just plain embarrassing.

She just hoped none of the others laughed when they turned up.

* * *

Mercury cautiously took one step back. The youma took one step forward to compensate. She edged a little to the right, to get a little closer to the cover of a tree. In reply, the youma shook its pointing finger in a no gesture, before it turned and pointed at the furiously struggling Sailor Jupiter. 

Mercury frowned slightly. So that was the way it was going to be. The body language had been unmistakable; Mako-chan's life was forfeit if she tried to use the cover to get a better position. It didn't use its eyes to see, so her fog was useless. And he'd already beaten Jupiter, so a direct physical confrontation would be unwise. There had to be something else she could do.

Slowly, she raised her hand and activated her battle computer, the blue tint of the glasses covering her eyes in an instant.

The creature cocked its head, seemingly content to keep the impasse, as she fought with her computers to give her something, anything that could be used against it. But again, the data contradicted and fluctuated, leaving the readings useless. It was almost as if the creature knew how to fool her scans.

After a few seconds, the creature moved its head again, staring into the distance, before it turned to her and started to walk forward. Her time was up, she realised as the youma balled its hands into fists, preparing to strike her down.

"Hold it right there!"

* * *

There was something wonderfully instinctive about those dramatic moments in fights, where someone new would enter the fray, announcing themselves in as self-glorifying a way as possible. You had to all stop and look at their entrance. You just had to. 

But when you felt their presence before they entered the park, it took all the fun out of the playful 'oh-my-goodness, who-threw-THAT-to-stop-my-devastating-attack?' type questions. The future's Mars could still do the sneaky entrances to him - hells, he had the sneaking suspicion that she enjoyed it. But as for this...

He quietly sighed. How banal.

Oh well. Best to play along.

* * *

The youma turned to face the new arrivals. 

As if on cue, Mercury's fog dissipated, allowing a single moonbeam to shine dramatically on the last three Sailor girls, who stood flanking each other - Moon in the middle, Mars on her right, and Venus on the left.

"Tying up innocent young girls is plain wrong (not to mention, Kunzite did it once too, so it's getting a little old!) For the Moon, I--"

"Why?" the youma interrupted, in a hissing, rumbling voice.

Sailor Moon blinked, losing her rhythm. The youma weren't supposed to interrupt the speeches. "Uh... what do you mean 'why'?"

"Why is it wrong?" The youma folded its left arm across its chest, resting its right elbow against it, the hand supporting its chin. "Do you claim that, for example, if a consenting female chose to willingly engage in bondage, that her partner is not to be forgiven?"

* * *

A millennium and a mile away, a green-haired woman sighed, resisting the urge to bury her head in her hands. Here we go. He couldn't resist it, could he? He just couldn't let one speech slip by without a commentary.

* * *

The Senshi collectively blinked, feeling the situation slipping from their control. Mercury, surprised by the youma's sudden gregariousness, blinked as the shock diverted her mind from analysing their opponent for a moment, allowing her to realise something about its costume. 

"Er..." Moon began, before she shook her head. "Wait a minute. Sailor Jupiter isn't going to just go around playing kinky stuff with someone with your fashion sense. I bet she wasn't consenting at all!"

"Granted," the creature agreed, settling its arms by its sides. "Even so, it seems somewhat cold to me, to kill someone because they broke one of your petty moral hangups. Do you go breaking the legs of your milkman if he gives you cream instead of yoghurt? Were you not hugged enough as a child?"

"I would never break someone's legs," Moon protested, baffled by the youma's tactics. "Why are you saying these things about me!?" Tears shimmered in her eyes as she tried to hide the hurt.

"Don't listen to him, Sailor Moon!" Mercury urged. "See there, under those cloth strips - that's the same uniform that Jadeite and the other leaders were wearing!"

"He's one of the Dark Kingdom's leaders," Venus realised, looking at the ribbon-obscured jacket.

"Typical youma," Mars noted, pulling out an ofuda, "when it's outmatched, it tries to insult its way out of trouble. Well, we're not going to sit here and let one of our own be treated like this."

"Ah," the youma noted, raising its hand again as it settled into an attack posture, "time for general unpleasantness."

"Everybody, be careful and keep your distance!" Mercury shouted to her companions. "It's very dangerous in close quarters, but I don't think it has any long-range attacks!"

The youma moved its pointing hand slightly to the right, turning the palm of its tatter-gloved hand forward. A moment later, a sickly dark beam shot out, exploding through the unfortunate tree that Mercury had previously eyed for cover.

As bark and tree chips rained down on her, Mercury cleared her throat. "I guess it might have long-range attacks too," she admitted ruefully.

"Well, so do we," Venus noted. "Crescent Beam!"

The creature flung itself backwards, barely falling its way out of being hit by the attack. As soon as its shoulders hit the grassed ground, it used the momentum and its hands to flip itself into the dark cover of the unlit trees.

"Well handled," its voice whispered out, echoing off the trees so much that it was hard to pinpoint the creature's position. "No hesitation. Will you hesitate now, to follow me here?"

"It's a trap. It's got to be." Venus looked to the others. Mercury nodded, agreeing.

Mars shrugged, trying to squash a tiny, nagging voice in her head. The way the youma spoke, beneath the harsh tones of its voice was a timbre that seemed familiar. "What are we supposed to do though? We can't just leave him in there." She pointed a thumb at the dark copse as she looked at the others.

Mercury tapped her visor, before she sighed. "I can't get a fix on the youma."

"I could burn the trees down..."

"No!" Sailor Moon shook her head. "We can't do that, we can't destroy this beautiful park. We'll just have to go in, and be extra careful."

They looked at her, and nodded, before they turned as one and entered the grove.

"Can you see him?" Mars asked, her muscles taut as her eyes scanned the darkness.

Sailor Moon squinted, trying to see in the shadows. Dark hands wrapped around mouth and arms, inhuman strength immobilising and mutifying. For a second, nothing, and then the starting of something - a painful buildup of energy. Before it could be noticed by the others, it was gone. And so was she.

"No, I can't." Mercury answered Mars. "Sailor Moon, perhaps you can--" She turned to look at her leader, only to find no-one there.

"Sailor Moon!" Venus cried out, staring at the empty spot.

"She's gone." Mercury looked at her computer, resisting the faint urge to hit the malfunctioning machine. "The youma must have teleported her somewhere."

"Oh great. So what do we do now?" Mars wondered.

"Mrfph mrr mrph!" Jupiter suggested loudly from the clearing, pointedly nodding her head at her bonds.

* * *

It was like ice-hot acid. It burned from her skin inwards, seeping through her nerves, washing amongst her blood, lancing into her bones, seeping into her marrow, before it all rushed outwards: bones, blood, nerves, skin, beyond. 

It hurt. It... it hurt!

She felt the arms and ribbons wrapped around her loosen, and then release, giving her a moment to see grey skies, before the interaction between their powers reached critical point, and their energy exploded. Their bodies catapulted apart, mixed energy streaking from them like blood from the wounded.

Silence.

Silverish-white and darkish-green energy arced around their fallen bodies, slowly seeping into the greyish, dead ground.

Silence.

* * *

"What do you mean you can't find her!?" Jupiter showed her frustration by tossing the balled-up rags that had tied her as far away as possible. 

Mercury didn't look up from her computer. "The youma teleported out with Sailor Moon. Since it didn't open a portal like the others of its kind seem to when transporting more than one person, I have no real idea where to start looking. All I can tell you is that she doesn't seem to be in the general area." She looked up then, but still didn't meet her teammates' eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Is she... You don't think she's in the Dark Kingdom?" Venus breathed, voicing all their worries.

"More like we're afraid she's in the Dark Kingdom," Jupiter muttered, thinking the others couldn't hear her. She shook her head. "She'll be okay, she's always okay. Right, Sailor Mars?"

Mars didn't answer for a moment as she looked to the smog-screened sky. There had been something horribly, horribly familiar about that youma. The way it spoke, not so much the voice but the way it spoke down without using contempt... She couldn't get rid of a cold fear in her soul.

"...Of course she'll be alright. She'll probably wail so much that that youma will put himself out of his misery."

* * *

His eyes snapped open. 

Unsteady moments later, he stood over the unconscious Sailor Moon. Had it been Serenity - 'his' Serenity, she would have been awake too. But this was a fourteen year old girl, unprepared for the pain that was to come.

He slowly untied his blindfold, and looked down at her. In her right hand lay her crescent weapon, the current house of the dread crystal. Why it was in her hand was unimportant to him - either she had called it consciously before the energy flux, or it had come on its own, to protect its mistress from its enemy.

Either way, it was there. That was what was important.

He closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them again. He knelt, his right hand curling, the arm cocking as he narrowed his eyes.

Oh gods. This was going to hurt. This was going to really hurt.

His hand snatched the silvery-white gem, the dead air wooshing from the speeded grab. As he brought his hand up, socking his elbow so that it looked like he was going to punch the ground, the ginzuisho reacted. Light poured from between his fingers, sizzling and raging as it fought against his own energy. Around his neck, hidden beneath black bandages, his green crystal thrummed, glowing brightly, erratically, in raging counterpoint to its mineral cousin.

He snarled, building up the dark energy in his hand, as he felt the ginzuisho's fell-light seep beneath the cloth strips covering his fingers. Building his energy would make it all the worse, but he had to subsume the ginzuisho's blinding glow, to make sure there wasn't too much silvery-white light for him to...

His fist plunged down into his own ill-lit shadow. Not the best of shade for such a manoeuvre, but it would do. After a moment, he pulled his empty hand out, leaving his enemy's crystal... somewhere else.

The energy around his hand didn't disappear, however. The seething mix fluctuated, pulsing and crackling as white and dark, dark green fought each other with sabres of minuscule lightning. Desperately, he spread the energy, letting it travel down his arm and onto his torso.

He could really do without losing a hand right now.

Finally, the flux ended, as the conflicting powers reached their mystical critical point. And for the second time that day, his body was flung across the landscape from the backlash. Desperately he fought the black fingers of unconsciousness that were closing around him, his teeth grinding at the effort. He had to stay awake, he had to stay...

* * *

"Do you have anything yet?" 

Mercury rolled her shoulders, trying to get rid of the itch in the small of her back. Even with her face almost literally buried in her computer, she could feel her teammates' stares. Finally, she turned to her friends, and shook her head. "My scans are just not making sense," she admitted. "They could be one hundred metres away, or one hundred dimensions." Her brow creased slightly to add to her determined expression as she added, "I can work it out. I just need more time."

"She might not have that time!" Jupiter threw her hands into the air in frustration.

"Alright," Venus cut in, "we know you can do it, Sailor Mercury. The rest of us should spread out, look around. If they are only a hundred metres away, we'd be idiots to not at least try to find her."

* * *

"...ueen Sere..." 

The dark faded, awareness sparking slightly, a dull glow against the black of unconsciousness.

"Neo-qu...enity..."

Her eyes screwed up slightly, trying to entrap the moment of bliss, free from the pain and hurt, safe from...

"...please,...queen, you ...awaken."

Her mind rebelled at the constant intrusion, desiring a return to the wonderful numbness of sleep. Then, she remembered. She remembered the pain.

With a gasp, she opened her eyes, shooting up from her lying position. She stared down at herself, horror quickly dimming to confusion. Her Senshi suit was slightly shredded, but besides that... "I don't understand; I... I felt..."

"Pain." The word was clipped, spoken in a quiet voice.

She whirled to face the speaker, her hand tightening around the handle of her moon wand, drawing comfort from its weight.

A knight in crystalline armour stood looking at her. The man's armour was pale lime - almost white, in fact, and Sailor Moon couldn't help shake the feeling that it would be glinting if only there was enough sunlight for it. Despite wearing a solid chunk of mineral for protection, the knight still looked fightworthy. The only thing that wasn't quite storybook about him,  
besides the absence of a Great Big Sword was the two-sizes-too-big grey cloak that hung around his shoulders.

The eyeslits of his full-face helm were too narrow and shadow-filled for her to see his eyes, but she still picked up a sense of anticipation in the man's stance. "You felt pain, pain unimagineable," the knight began again. "And now you wonder why you feel fine."

"Who are you?" She frantically looked around, trying to hang onto the threads of her composure. "Where are we?" The faintest hint of a whine tinged her voice as she realised that this probably wasn't Earth. "What happened to that other guuuuyyyy!?"

The man bowed at the waist, his left arm falling to rest on his back, the other sweeping forward to rest against his stomach in a classic courtier's pose. "A good name for me might be..." he cocked his head as he rose from his bow, as if to think about it, before continuing, "the Green Knight. As to where we are," he paused, looked around, and then looked straight at her eyes, "well, I'm afraid that depends on you. I need your aid, Sailor Moon, in vanquishing an evil being."

Sailor Moon looked around again, to make sure the bandaid guy wasn't around, before she looked back to the Green Knight. "Vanquish? Ah... who did you need help 'vanquishing'? Beryl? That bad fashion guy that just attacked me?"

The knight shook his head. "Oh no. And here I thought it would be obvious. No, if you are who I believe you to be, then I am afraid that the evil I seek to destroy," a gauntleted hand rose to point at her, "is you."

* * *

The ginzuisho oriented itself, glowing brightly as it channelled off the killing energy of its foe. It floated there, nowhere in the middle of somewhere, confused. At best its intellect was doglike, dull, only suited to interpret the wishes of its wielder in the best way possible. 

Finally, after millennia, it had been reunited with one of the blood, one of the line it had been created to serve. It had purpose again, it could serve. But now it was alone again, in some nameless dimension with no way to return to its mistress.

Oh, it had the power. There was no doubting that; it most certainly had the power. But without a hand to wield it, a steady mind to guide it, it couldn't find her. The crystal glowed, as distressed as its pseudo-mind could get.

It was alone.

Ghostly fingers cradled the crystal, as a glowing face stared into its reflective surface.

"Come," the spirit of Queen Serenity of the Silver Millennium whispered, "my daughter has need of you. Now more than ever."

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

Sailor Moon and associated characters/background were created by Naoko Takeuchi. No disrespect is intended in their use.

Version 3 - should be final version.

Emerald journals will be shown as usual( **-#-** )

* * *

**-#-**

Is it my destiny to be an assassin? Has Fate decreed that I live only so that I can make others die? Is this the sum total reason for my existence?

I still remember those times just before the Great Ice, when I was trying to act the hero. I still remember trying my hardest to fight the good fight, tried my best to be someone to look up to.

I remember failing.

There was always a distance between myself and the other fighters that I could not overcome. No matter how much I dressed myself up as something better, as something positive, there was always that nagging thought that it was all a sham.

I could teleport, yes, but only from shadows. I could draw energy from the elements, yes, but not as quickly as I could drain it from youma. I could fight in the open, yes, but never as effectively as when I struck from the shadows.

There was no getting around it. In a world of bright colours and short skirts, my powers stood me apart as something different, something darker. I remember always having my powers looked at with suspicion.

I ignored it, as best I can. My sister had spent months in convincing me to fight the good fight - I could not have borne to see her face if I had given it up. But for all that, after the events of the Great Ice, I remember afterwards how no one was ever very surprised that I became what I am. They expected it. I believe that they somehow think that it was my destiny.

Idiots. What you will become is not about what you are, or who you are, or who you are thought to be. My life, like anyone's life, has been a series of choices and consequences.

After the rebellion, it came down to this:

If I had done nothing, I would have lived - albeit in exile. If I fought the Senshi directly without allies, I would have died. And if I fought from the shadows, then one day it was possible that I might get my lucky shot and win. That, then, left me a clear choice - to do nothing, or to do what I can.

Destiny be damned. I choose to do what I can.

- Found by traders in a bundle of home-made paper in a ramshackle house near the old city of Rome in 2457.

**-#-**

* * *

Usagi had spent the majority of her life living in a densely populated metropolis. She was used to a constant level of background noise. The clacking of train tracks, the neighbour's radio, her brother's console games, even the snores of her father at night. Her occasional trips to nature - the hot springs or the snowfields - reverberated with the sounds of wind sighing through trees, of cicadas in the summer, the rhythmic clack of a traditional Japanese water pump, or the caw of crows. 

She had never realised what silence truly was until this moment. The land around her was dead, grey dirt stretched in every direction. One look at the unnatural sky made it clear that this was not Earth. Besides this knight and her, there was no life here to make a sound. Her heart thumped in her chest, her eardrums throbbing with a rush of blood. But still, it was silent.

She gathered her courage, and looked up at the armoured man. Her voice managed to not crack as she stared at him and calmly replied, "I am not evil."

"Not yet, perhaps." The man allowed. "But I've seen the future. A choice is coming. Soon enough, you will be given the opportunity to take away all the negative energy on the entire planet."

"You can see the future?" She remembered Urawa, Ami's sort-of boyfriend, and nodded. "Okay. But that still doesn't sound very evil."

"Not at first glance, no. But a lot of good work has been done due to bad emotions. Have you ever looked at any of the great monuments - the pyramids, perhaps - and wondered why they were made? Or have you ever worked extra hard to pass a test? That's pride. It fuels the desire to do better and to leave your mark on the world."

Sailor Moon shook her head. "But there's nothing negative about feeling a little bit of justified pride."

"That's just it - there is no 'little' or 'lot' - when this sort of magic is involved there's only the choice of 'all' or 'nothing'. Either you take all of the pride, or you take none. And it doesn't stop there - have you ever wanted to improve yourself after seeing someone else do well? Have you ever dreamed of wearing something that you saw being worn in a catalogue? That's envy. It fuels the desire to improve yourself so you can be more of an equal to your peers."

He held up his hand when it looked like Sailor Moon was going to reply. "Even something as simple as eating ice-cream is a negative desire. Ice cream has no nutritional value, it does you no good to eat it. It's addictive and we still eat when we know it's bad for us. The only reason to have it is because it tastes good. That's self-indulgence." He buried his head in his hands for a moment, before growling. "Wait, scratch all that. That example was rubbish. Damn it, that sounded so much better in my head! I knew I should have written down what I was going to say!"

Sailor Moon blinked. The man was looking less and less like a knight, and less and less self-assured as he started berating himself. "I don't understand what you're saying. I'd never want to do something that would harm anyone. Why would I ever want to alter people's emotions?" Sailor Moon argued.

"I don't know why you are going to do it," the knight responded, falling out of his self-recrimination. "Right now, you seem like a good enough kid. But people can change in all sorts of ways. I don't know. Maybe the Ginzuisho corrupted you. Maybe your past life took you over. Maybe there's a side to you that you just don't want to see."

He shook his head. "I just don't know. But if you do what I saw, then don't you see? The human drive, the need to excel is tied to negative emotions. If you ever decide to take that away, humanity will languish. They'll have no drive or desire to do anything! Sailor Moon - just look at any one of your companions. Sailor Mars is proud and arrogant. If you took that away, you might think she'd be a better person. But you'd soon realise that she wasn't Sailor Mars any more. She'd be something else that's just wearing her body. A shadow of what she should be.

"We have to stop it now before it happens! Sailor Moon, please - we have to change what's to come." He knelt, offering his left arm to her. "I'm begging you! Please help me to stop the coming evil."

Sailor Moon looked up to the knight and his proffered hand. The words hadn't really made sense, but the desperation in his voice was easily apparent. "I-"

Silver light surrounded the girl. The man jumped back, arms crossed across his face. For a moment, he saw the ghostly image of a mature, silver-haired woman behind the girl, before light flared, and they were gone.

The crystalline armour dissolved into motes of energy as Emerald stared for a few moments at the spot where Sailor Moon had been. His shoulders slightly slumped and he muttered, "Typical."

* * *

Sailor Jupiter looked over at Sailor Mars as they searched the park for their leader. It didn't take a genius to realise that the Fire Senshi was feeling troubled. 

"Rei, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Sailor Mars muttered in an automatic response. Seeing the quiet disbelief on the Thunder Senshi's face, she sighed. "The last time I saw Emerald, he was being chased by Kunzite. I... don't think he got away. That youma general we faced tonight... I think... no, I'm pretty sure that it was him."

Jupiter blinked. "You don't mean..."

"Yes. I think the Dark Kingdom's caught and brainwashed him just like they did with Mamoru. And he's kidnapped Usagi."

"It's okay." Sailor Jupiter hesitantly put her hand on Sailor Mars's shoulder. "We'll get them both back."

* * *

Prince Demande glanced at the pale glow of the setting sun - one of the few things of even mild beauty on the harsh planet of Nemesis, before he walked into a small chapel-like building. 

"Saphir, what are you doing here?"

Blue Saphir blinked, turning his attention away from a mural to his brother. "Is it time, then?"

Prince Demande nodded. "Yes. At last, after waiting so long, we are ready to attack Crystal Tokyo. I'm surprised you are not preparing as well."

"I was considering the past." Saphir pointed to the eight murals that covered the walls of the large room. Each mural depicted vaguely represented figures fighting against sailor suited women. Having been painted long after the original rebels' deaths, the painters had decided it would desecrate their memory if they guessed at how they looked - the faces, when they were painted at all, were left with only the broadest of features.

Demande walked up to his brother, looking up at the mural that had caught his brother's attention. The centrepiece of the room, and largest of the paintings, it showed the back of a black-clad man with long green hair. His right hand, glowing with energy, was pointed at two sailor-suited figures that lay prone at his feet. One of the figures was painted with a short sandy-blond hair, the other with wavy bluish-green hair. The man's left arm was shielding his face from the harsh glowing light of the woman floating before him - the Dread Queen Serenity.

"The tales say he was the last one standing," Saphir noted. "It is said that he outlasted them all. The legends say he was only moments from victory before Serenity took the field. They even say he escaped and may still be alive today."

"The legends are probably wrong," Demande replied.

"But what if they're not?"

"Then we will soon have a legend fighting on our side. Come, Saphir, let us go."

* * *

Sailor Moon looked around at what appeared to be ruins on the Moon's surface. 

"My daughter, are you unharmed?" The silver-haired spirit looked at her with concern on her face. In her ghostly hands floated the Ginzuisho.

"Mother?" Sailor Moon whispered, her heart warming as if to confirm to her the woman's identity.

Queen Serenity nodded.

"Mother," Sailor Moon hesitated. "What that knight said... it didn't make any sense. I don't understand how he could have seen the future or how I could be the cause of something that would make him sound so desperate. Mother, am I destined to cause such pain?"

* * *

Sailor Venus looked behind a park bench. "Nothing here. That's the whole park." She turned to Sailor Mercury. "Have you found anything?" 

Sailor Mercury looked up from her computer and shook her head. "The youma used a form of teleportation I've never seen before. I just don't have enough information to track him. I'm sorry."

Sailor Venus sighed. "Alright. We need to regroup with the others and-" She stopped, seeing a silver glow envelope herself and Sailor Mercury. "What's going on?"

"I think it's-" Sailor Mercury began, before they both disappeared.

* * *

Queen Serenity's spirit sighed. "Usagi, there will always be people who seek to sway you with words when they know they will fail to sway you with threats. This man is no different. He has lied so often that even he has trouble remembering the truth any more. My precious, sweet child. You must hold to the courage of your convictions, and forge forward. With your court by your side, you will always have the support to do what is right." 

Sailor Moon turned, seeing the other Senshi appearing beside her, confused expressions on their faces.

"Remember the past so that you can forge a better future." The Senshi closed their eyes, memories of a long-ago ball filling their thoughts. "And know that this man has lied to you, Usagi. You must forget him and put your doubts aside, my girl."

The queen moved her hand, and the Ginzuisho floated down to Sailor Moon. Her crescent wand appeared, allowing the gem to reattach to the weapon. "Time has run out. The Dark Kingdom is preparing to invade the Earth. I can send you to where you need to be. Hold true, my daughter. Be brave, and hold true."

The Ginzuisho flashed, and the five girls were taken elsewhere.

* * *

Beryl's eyes widened as the Senshi materialised in the arctic plains, less than a kilometre from the dimensional entrance to the Dark Kingdom. Recovering quickly, she saw to it that five youma sisters were dispatched to intercept within a minute.

* * *

His eyes were closed, his body seated, his expression calm. 

"You are even more pathetic than Beryl."

His eyes shot open at this. Floating in front of him was the ghost who had rescued Usagi. "Yes, well and whoever you are, you're dead," he replied. "And I know which of those two options I'd rather be. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm currently sifting through the dimensions trying to find someone."

"It is too late for that. I have sent the Senshi to where they are most needed."

His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I have sent them to face their destiny. They will soon engage Beryl's forces."

"You what!? You sent those five inexperienced girls up against the army of the Dark Kingdom!?

The ghost regally nodded.

"You're _insane_! And you're lucky you're already dead or I'd rip you apart myself!"

"Why do you care?" she asked.

"Because it's my planet too, you sanctimonious cretin! My parents and my sister are still alive on that mudball and you've sent the girls with the best chance of saving them on a suicide mission! Besides using them to find Serenity, that's the other reason why I never tried to kill them - whether I like them or not, they do tend to save the world a lot! But you - you're unbelievable! You're just like her!"

"Who?"

"Neo-Queen Serenity, you pusillanimous imbecile! Always sending out others to do her dirty work. Always with that better-than-you attitude." He visibly stopped himself. "Enough. Thanks to your mind-numbing stupidity, I'll have to go on a killing spree."

His eyes closed, his mind going through the actions needed to bypass the teleportation eddies of this dimension, and he was gone.

The ghost turned to her companion, who had just materialised next to her. "That was a most unpleasant man. You were right, his buttons are rather easy to push."

Pluto nodded.

"You are sure that provoking him was the best course?"

"Yes," Pluto affirmed. "I swore to you on your dying breaths, my queen, that my actions would be devoted to seeing your kingdom reborn. I swore that I would never endanger this future through any direct act of mine. As always, I remain true to that vow."

The spirit nodded, fading from view.

* * *

Kunzite frowned as he waited at the portal that led to the North Pole. Metallia had been confident that the Senshi would soon attack them, but still they were nowhere in sight. He bit off a growl of annoyance, contenting himself with thoughts of which attack to use when they arrived.

* * *

The advance spearhead of the Dark Kingdom invasion force gathered on the plains of their land, ready at last to retake Earth. Raucous laughter erupted as one or another beast told tales of what they would do once they were through the portal. 

A swathe of energy shot through their ranks, disintegrating a dozen of the tightly packed monsters. The laughter died in a moment as the army turned as one to view the man facing them.

"I'll flay to the bones any of you who thinks you're taking one step through that portal!" the man shouted. "I didn't risk temporal annihilation just to let a party of throwback halfwits like you onto my planet. If nothing else, my sister would kill me if she found out that I let that happen! You have a choice - leave here or die."

"You! You can't escape us, spy," one of the youma hissed, grinning. "Not this time. There are some among us who can block teleportation. You're going to spend the rest of your life screaming in pain. You will learn the price of crossing the Dark Kingdom. You will only be the first of many once we conquer Earth."

"You bunch of mewling pissants," Emerald drawled in amusement. "Escape you? You just don't get it. You think you're the height of the monster kingdom? You're deluded enough to think you're special? You don't even compare to the toe-wart of some of the things I've faced - especially the Senshi. You don't realise just what it is I can do to you. Let me show you something." He held his hands out, palms up. After a moment, twenty small diamond-shaped crystals formed from nothing, standing in a little pyramid pile between his cupped hands. He stood there for a second, silent, before throwing the crystals into the air.

Hundreds of eyes followed the crystals' trails, widening when they saw the minerals crackle with energy, before transforming into large, threatening beasts. Each beast, vaguely feminine, landed around the man and surrounded him like a living shield.

"I've made quite a few improvements to their original design over the years," Emerald noted conversationally. "I never have much reason to create them any more, since the Senshi tear them apart like rice paper. But I think you'll find them to be sufficiently entertaining. Droids-"

The twenty monsters perked, facing their master.

"-oh, you know what to do," he said with a vague wave of his hand.

The twenty monsters grinned, each turning to face the surrounding swarm.

* * *

Screams of bloodlust and of agony ripped through the battlefield as the cacophony of war reverberated across the plain. Vision wavered as everywhere you turned there was the crackling of energy, the wake of ice and fire and electrical attacks, the snap of claw against bone. 

"I can't remember the last time I was in a fun little fray like this," Emerald said conversationally to his crystal as he sidestepped a youma's attack. A jagged spike of crystal coalesced in his hand, before he used it to stab the attacker in the throat. As the youma died, he casually withdrew and then threw the spike with such force that it completely buried itself in the chest of another youma.

"Really?" He asked in surprise, grabbing the throat of an enemy and using it as a shield against several attacks until it disintegrated, then raising his hand and blasting away his attackers. "Has it been that long? I really didn't think that-"

He turned his head. The dimensional wall between Earth and the Dark Kingdom had frayed to the point where he could sense the auras near the connection point in the Arctic. "Was that... Jupiter?" He strained his senses. The droids, seeing their creator distracted, closed in and protected him from any attacker. After another minute, he felt it again. Another aura was being snuffed out of existence. "Mercury?"

He looked down at his crystal in confusion. "They're... dying? But how? I'm taking down the youma's army. What's left to take them out? Have I changed the past that much?"

He shook his head, his right hand pointing back and unleashing an energy blast that disintegrated a group of youma that had been sneaking up on him. "Alright. Something's going very wrong here. Droids!"

The fifteen surviving monstrous automatons perked their ears.

"No delays! Wipe them out. Now!"

The droids returned to the battle with increased fervour as he raised his arms and begun sucking energy from the opposing throng.

* * *

His face was grim as he held aloft the last of the youma, its body falling to dust as he drained its energy. For a moment his body glowed as he adjusted to the increased energy. He was still not as powerful as he had been before he returned to the past, but he was getting close. Even Serenity shouldn't be able to stop him now - at least not with her current level of skill. 

The man looked at the 5 remaining droids. Each was heavily scarred by battle. Two were barely alive at all - if their existence could be called life.

"Thank you," he said with a nod. The droids bowed, then shrunk back into small crystals. He bent down, took the crystals, and stared at them as they dissolved into motes of light.

With that, he glanced up, and teleported to the last of the Senshi's auras that he felt disappear.

* * *

He looked down at the lifeless, entombed body, not even noticing the cold wind that was biting into him. 

"Damn it, Mars. How could you let yourself die like this? You're supposed to be stronger than this. You're supposed to be more. I was supposed to be the one who killed-"

Feeling the wisps of energy, he glanced up. "-anything that threatened you," he rapidly amended as he looked at Sailor Mars's spirit. Her ghost looked back at him, a slightly sad expression on her face. For a moment, he considered changing back to what he'd originally intended to say. The girl was dead - she probably deserved the truth.

He looked down again to the entombed girl. She was no more than fifteen years old and here she was, dead and gone, and probably no one would ever know the circumstances to properly mourn her. He despised what she helped create, but she wasn't that girl just yet. She never would be now. To hell with the truth. He'd won - he'd outlasted her. Hurting her any further would just be petty.

He looked up at the spirit. "You deserved better than this, Rei. You deserved to go down fighting against a hundred or a thousand enemies. You deserved an end so epic that its legend would have to be written across the stars. You deserved more than being entombed like this - in this... ice."

"How touching. If you like her so much, you're welcome to join her. Although I doubt your death could be as pathetic as hers was."

Emerald turned to see Kunzite, his expression cold. "Mind your mouth, you miserable vermin. She was twenty times the fighter you ever were."

"I very much doubt that," Kunzite replied. "Although it was curious that they somehow snuck past me. Still, killing you might make up for missing my chance with them." He concentrated, his arms gesturing as he shot four energy boomerangs at the other man.

Quickly twisting, Emerald managed to manoeuvre to avoid being hit all of the energy boomerangs. With a snarl he brought both arms up and unleashed an unholy torrent of power. Kunzite's eyes widened as he felt his shield buckle in seconds. '_What **are** you?_' he thought, his shields collapsing and his lungs burning away before he ever got a chance to say it.

"Do you understand now, Kunzite? Despite your power, you're nothing compared to her. That's the level of power that Mars was capable of. Oh, nothing to say?" Emerald wondered as the Dark General faded into oblivion. "I would have expected at least one last comeback."

Behind him the four energy boomerangs completed their return arc, slicing into Emerald's back with enough force to leave the edges jutting out from his chest. With the last of the energy imbued by the Dark General gone, the boomerangs faded into nothing, leaving only the wounds behind.

"Touché," Emerald gasped before falling to the ground.

* * *

The spirit of Sailor Mars looked down at the fallen man, her eyes taking in his terrible wounds. She took a step forward, then stopped. Her head turned, feeling a call. She disappeared as she realised that her princess needed her.

* * *

He opened his eyes, feeling the torrent of magic that was being cast nearby. With a grunt of effort, he dragged himself to a snow embankment. Leaning over that, he watched the last moments of Serenity facing some sort of huge creature - the auras seemed to be a mix of Beryl's and the Metallia creature. 

He watched in that moment as the monstrous giant was destroyed. He saw Serenity fall. His senses saw her aura dim and die. He pushed himself onto his back, his eyes staring at the sky.

"Does this mean that I won? Just like that? Is... is Serenity dead?"

Tears slowly leaked from his eyes at the thought. After a few seconds, he choked off a sob. "She's dead." The tears started to flow faster. "She's... dead."

The biting arctic wind began to freeze his tears, but he managed to ignore the sensation. "Thank the gods, she's actually dead!"

He chuckled, and started to laugh. The laugh didn't last long before his injuries flared, and he passed out.

Nearby, Sailor Mars's body was enveloped in red energy. It rose, then disappeared as the Senshi were reborn.

* * *

In the middle of an ice field, some eighty kilometres from the North Pole, a broken body of a broken man lay unmoving against a small snowdrift. 

He'd won. There was nothing left to do. The world could now go on as it liked. So was there any real point in going on? After all, with Serenity dead, he could-

His eyes shot open, realisation shooting through him. "Hold on..."

The clunk of a metal staff against the ice distracted him from an epiphany.

"Pluto." He didn't raise his head.

"Emerald," she murmured with a small nod.

"Come to kill me then?"

Her grim expression was her only answer.

"Thought so. I get that a lot," he noted before chuckling. "Sorry that wasn't really very funny." When she didn't respond, he forged on. "Oh - you'd probably know. Out of curiosity, can you remind me what my real name was?"

Sailor Pluto hesitated for a moment, then answered. "Your birth-name was Yukio."

"Really?" Emerald blinked. "Huh. Well that was a bit boring. No wonder I forgot it."

Pluto shook her head. "Enough. I'm here to finish this."

"Well of course you are," he agreed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm surprised it took you so long."

She cut him off. "There was no need to hurry. Despite your attempt, nothing has changed. Nothing of significance, anyway. All of those youma you just killed? They would have died anyway. Your attempt to sway Sailor Moon? Wasn't even worth trying. Your entire life? Barely worth noting. And do you know what the funniest thing is?

"If you had left in exile after the rebellion, you would have found a way to link with the energy of the planet Nemesis and become supremely powerful. If you had only waited another fifty years before travelling to the past, you would have met the descendants of your rebellion and inspired them to a complete and total victory. Either way, you would have won."

He raised his eyebrows as if to say '_I really don't believe you'_.

Her eyes narrowed. "But then, every time you come close to winning, you manage to shoot yourself in the foot. I've waited centuries to tell you this." She leaned over and whispered in his ear, "You lose. As always. For all your posturing and your woe-is-me journals, nothing you ever do really makes a difference. You will never win, Yukio."

He saw her eyes widen as she heard him chuckle in response.

"Ah, Pluto." He coughed for a moment, winced, then continued. "You don't get it. I don't have to win. All I really have to do is to see you lose."

Pluto stepped back as she felt a creeping lethargy move through her body. Her steps faltered, her power and strength dropping from the power drain that he was holding on her.

Emerald pushed himself up, his wounds visibly sealing and healing as he stole her energy. His eyes locked on hers, and he smiled mirthlessly. "All of the other Senshi fought me several times before they learned how to block my drain. They covered each other for those first few fights. But I've never directly fought you before, have I? Come on Pluto, you should have known better than this! In the future I've survived far worse than the damage I took from Kunzite. I halfway can't believe that you fell for it. Why attack me now, after so long?"

"I have no choice but to act," Pluto gasped. "With your attention now off the Senshi, you pose a threat to Crystal Tokyo. Dead Scream."

The attack splattered against his energy shield, clearly not taking him off guard.

"This is impossible," she muttered, feeling her strength sap away as more energy drained from her. "I should have seen this."

"Probably," he agreed. "I don't know if your reputation is deserved or overinflated. But I guess I will have to take the risk that you didn't and that you aren't acting. I'll let you in on a secret." He rose his left hand, allowing green energy to coruscate from his palm. Pluto slammed to the ground as his attack struck her in the stomach. "I didn't jump into the past with just a hope and a prayer that you wouldn't stop me. In fact, I was planning on you attacking me. Without you I had to waste months getting back enough power, and without you I couldn't attempt what I am about to do."

He blinked. "Wait. I'm gloating. That's always a good way to die. Better get on with it, then." Emerald set his legs and spread his arms. Energy began to build around him as he drew his power. The gem on his necklace glowed, seeming to add its own energies to the build-up.

"Dead Scream." It was harder to focus the energy this time, and again it shattered harmlessly against his shield. Worse yet, he was still draining energy from her. She made a motion with her Key to open an escape portal, but nothing happened.

"Most of your power is tied to Time, isn't it?" he noted conversationally, his hands starting to trace a complex pattern in the air. "Did you know that I can draw energy from Time, just as I can with the elements? It's how I was able to pierce the Time Barrier in the first place. You'll find that causality is currently too unstable around us to open a Portal."

"What are you doing?" Her voice was barely above a whisper; she struggled just to look up at him. Her hands were barely holding her kneeling form off the ground.

"I just felt the Senshi die," he noted. "But then again, I also felt Sailor Moon die just before the Great Ice. As I was lying there after Serenity's death, I had an epiphany. 'Fool me once' - isn't that the saying? And you just confirmed it. Nothing changed, you said. But the Senshi are dead - undoubtedly and undeniably. It seems more than likely then that they somehow have a way of coming back from death. But if that's true, then there's no point in my trying to kill Serenity. She'd just come back.

"Now that you've decided to show your hand, it occurs to me that I cannot afford to wait any longer for other solutions to present themselves. If I try to confront Serenity again, it's possible that you, or another person acting as Sailor Pluto, or even another version of you from another part of the timeline might be able to stop me. That means I must act now while you can't ambush me. So, I suppose I will have to go with Plan D."

"D?" A moment after her question, her arms buckled and she collapsed, leaving her to lie on the cold snow.

He nodded, but he never stopped drawing energy. "If I can't kill Serenity - my preferred plan A, or convince her to change the future - my fallback plan B, or somehow destroy the Ginzuisho - my unlikely plan C, then I have to ensure she can never do the one thing that started this whole mess." His eyes narrowed. "My pyrrhic plan D - stop the Purification."

"You can't," she whispered.

"Yes, I think I can," he responded with confidence as his hands made several jabbing motions to punctuate some of the hazy glowing green sigils he was drawing around him. "Thanks to your energy. I worked it out a long, long time ago. I can cast... an Anti-Purification."

"No. You can't. You don't know what it-"

"Oh, I can guess. Of course, doing this will almost certainly use all of my magic, which means that I cannot protect myself from a time paradox. That'll probably wipe me from existence. But not even a paradox will wipe out the outcome. Not when I'm using the powers of the Time Senshi to do it."

Emerald shook his head. "To be honest, I'd hoped to kill Serenity without having to try this. If this fails, I'll have no way of enacting plans E, F, or G. It's a pity, I really liked plan G. But as I said, it doesn't matter whether I lose, as long as your side does too. I'm tired of this endless fight, Pluto. I'm tired of being beaten down again and again and having to find the conviction in myself to return once more to the fight. At this stage of my life, I think even a pyrrhic victory is enough of a victory for me." The hazy sigils were beginning to sharpen in form as his hands began sketched the final symbols needed.

"Oh, and Pluto?" He looked at her as she struggled to bring her Time Key up for one last attack. "You lose."

"Dead Scr-"

With one last flourish, his hands completed the last of the sigils, and his power exploded towards the sky.

* * *

**-#-**

If I were asked to list the worst thing about being immortal, I would have to hesitate in my answer. Once, I might have thought that it was the ennui - the crushing boredom of life never-ending. Or the hubris - there can be no doubt of an immortal's over-weaning arrogance and the problems that it brings. But if I were to search in my soul of souls for an honest answer, I would have to say that there is nothing worse for an immortal than one thing:

Guilt. Regret can haunt you forever.

I have had countless crawling years to analyse my various failures. Chief amongst them, and my worst crime of all, was the realisation that I could have actually stopped it.

I could have stopped the Purification.

Not through the rebellion, which was perhaps doomed from its conception, but through my own powers. I could have actually made it so that Serenity could never have done it. In my own defence, I did not understand the relationship between my powers and hers until decades after she purified the world. I still remember the creeping horror I felt as I slowly came to a gradual understanding of what I could have done.

My power and Serenity's lie at opposite sides of the magical spectrum. Whenever they interact, they act much like matter and anti-matter, causing painful and explosive magical backlashes.

This, then, leads to the question: what if I had bathed the planet and its people in MY energy BEFORE Serenity had performed her Purification? What if I had performed some sort of Anti-Purification? The answer, I feel, is obvious.

The Purification would have failed. Crystal Tokyo would never have been possible in its current form. I would have won without a single drop of blood being shed.

It's too late now. While my energy could have ensured that a Purification was impossible, I cannot attempt it any more. I have no power to change men's minds. If I did, it would be a power that I would not dare use, for fear of falling to the same mistakes that Serenity did. No, humanity has been irrevocably changed, and I can no longer change it back.

I know that in truth I could not have stopped the Purification. I know that I would have needed the control over my power that I now have. I know that I would have needed more energy than I had at that time. I know that I did not understand my powers well enough back then to have succeeded.

Yet still, the guilt gnaws. Forever. Or until I die.

That is what it is, to be immortal.

- Retrieved from personal effects left behind after Mars pursued Emerald to a former hotel in the Caribbean in 2781.

**-#-**

* * *

Across the world, thousands of millions of people saw the world change. Burning bright emerald light spread across the sky, coming from the North to the South,  
stretching East and West as it spread almost too fast for the eye to see. Ten time zones saw their night skies erupt into a pseudo-day. Well over a billion were woken as the light permeated every surface and through every barrier, shining brighter than day. 

As the light blanketed the planet, green motes fell from the energy curtain, floating like light snow. Each mote travelled through brick and steel and concrete like it was not there, only stopping when it was absorbed by either the Earth or by a living creature.

Thousands of television cameras captured the phenomenon in a multitude of spots around the globe. For a couple of days, at least, this would be headline news. Experts' theories would hatch and breed and grow, and then die as time - as with most old news - let people grow disinterested.

In the wilds of a Japanese forest, six youma looked to the skies, their astonishment slowly turning to awe at the feeling of the energy above them.

In Tokyo, two cats - one black and one white - looked at each other, their worried expressions mirroring each other as the light illuminated their faces.

A young blonde girl, her memories still clouded from minutes-ago rebirth, woke screaming. Her eyes were wide, as she felt - without being able to explain it - that something had just gone horribly wrong.

A temple maiden frowned, leaning out of her bedroom window. Her psychic abilities stunted by her recent rebirth, she was not sure how and why she was feeling so angry and so sad at the same time. With a shake of her head, she wiped her eyes, before looking out at the light again.

In Osaka, a boy stared at the sky's display, confused at how familiar the green energy felt. He held out a hand, allowing some of the light motes to touch it. For a moment, his brown eyes flashed green, before he shook his head and returned home.

* * *

"Glorious!" he shouted, his power pumping into the atmosphere through his outstretched hands. His gaze turned from the sky to his crystal, which was floating in front of him. "Is it working?" 

The crystal pulsed.

"That's what I wanted to hear!" Emerald shouted, turning his gaze back to the sky. "I can't believe it! I've done it! Ha haa! I've won! I've actually gone and won!"

After a few more moments, his energy fluctuated as he felt his body tremor. Instead of passing, the tremors got worse until his whole body began to shake.

"Oh. Well," he said as his eyes turned once again to his crystal, "looks like I was right about not having the energy left to fight that paradox." The last of his energy burst from his fingertips, and with that he collapsed to his knees, still wildly shaking. He looked up at his crystal, a slight smile on his lips. "You know, the truest friend is the one who helps you become something more."

He could feel existence slip away, his body beginning to fade from temporal reality. As quickly as he could, he forced out, "Thank you, my friend. You made me into something... so much more."

As he faded into nothing, his smile widened when he heard the crystal reply, words pulsing in his mind.

**_Goodbye, my friend._**

* * *

Sailor Pluto slowly opened her eyes. She could feel the cold seeping through her limbs. Every breath felt like hundreds of tiny daggers were stabbing into her lungs. With a shuddering gasp, she forced herself to stand, using her Time Key as a crutch. 

Her eyes scanned the skies. Already the light was fading as the man's power dissipated. Her lips quirked into a grim smile as she shakily raised her staff to create a portal.

Her exhausted voice was barely a croak, but she still managed to force the words. "Well done, Yukio; I lost. But there was something you never did learn. Sometimes losing is winning."

With a sigh, she gathered her remaining strength. Closing her eyes, she added, "If you knew your original fate, I think you would have thanked me." She shook her head. "You took too damn long to get this done." With that, she was gone.

* * *

"Pluto! There you are." Mars walked into the Time Senshi's personal quarters in Crystal Tokyo's palace. "I've been searching for you." She blinked, noting how haggard her fellow Senshi looked. "Are you alright?" 

Pluto dismissively waved an exhausted hand. "I'll be fine once I get some rest. It was a necessary sacrifice." Her tired voice was barely a whisper. "Do you know, it took me thousands of manipulations over thousands of years, but I did it." Pluto raised her hands in a 'look around you' gesture. "I did it. Through my actions, Crystal Tokyo was born. It was due to me that this future came to pass."

Mars blinked. "Yes, that's... great. What's your point?"

"Oh, no point. Just thinking about past actions. Tell me, Rei, have you ever striven to gain something, only to realise only after you got it that it wasn't what you thought it was?"

Mars nodded. She hesitated, then asked "Are you sure you're alright?" She shook her head. "Wait, there's no time for that. You have to listen to me. I'm worried that Emerald might have found a way to pierce the time barrier."

Pluto raised her hand in a 'wait' gesture. "Come with me." She turned, and walked around a corner.

Mars stood there for a moment, her mouth tightening at being talked to so dismissively, before she followed the Time Senshi. After she rounded the corner, her sure stride skittered to a halt. Pluto was standing on her private balcony, but it was what was beyond her that made the Fire Senshi pause.

"What is that?" Mars's voice was tinged with horror. Beyond the balcony, beyond a dome of shimmering energy that Pluto had cast, where a crystal city of millions should have stood, there was only darkness. Her stomach began to churn as she realised that she could no longer feel a connection to her queen, or to any other Senshi besides Pluto.

"It is Nothing. In the most strict sense of that word." Pluto sighed, staring out through the dome of energy she was maintaining to keep the chronal entropy at bay. "Through no act of my own, the timeline has changed and this one is no longer sustainable. I cannot hold this off for long - I simply don't have the spare energy right now. I am sorry Rei. You were right. He did pierce the barrier, eventually. He should have managed it centuries ago. I thought that you should know you were right, before the end."

Mars's eyes narrowed as she looked at the green-haired Senshi. "What have you done?" she hissed as fire formed around her, blazing with her anger.

Pluto met her gaze. "I did nothing, Mars. Absolutely nothing." She raised her Time Key, before adding, "That was the whole point."

A moment after Pluto disappeared back to the Time Gates, the dome that was holding back the entropy flickered, then collapsed.

"Damn it all," Mars muttered, closing her eyes and letting her flames extinguish as Nothing washed over her.

* * *

**Author Notes:** Well, that is that. Thanks to my huge hiatus, it took around 10 years to complete this fic. Thanks go out to all the reviewers both now and in the past. 

You might have noticed that a lot of loose ends weren't tied up. Neo-queen Serenity was never, ever directly shown to ensure that there would always be doubt over what happened - Pluto's motivations aside. That was deliberate. In order to write the fic, I worked out what Emerald's crystal was (and why it hated Beryl), what exactly happened before, during, and after the Great Ice, Pluto's full motivations, and so on. I didn't cover a lot of that because it was extraneous to the plot, but mentioning them made the story-world seem bigger/more real. Also, I felt that placing the full explanation within this story would have damaged the story flow. When the story was originally planned, a sequel was mapped out to explain what really happened - at this stage I'm not sure if I'll do that sequel, or move onto other projects.

* * *

**Epilogue:**

Yukio stared in anger as the oni burst into flames. Letting the crystals that formed his helmet and armour dissolve, he turned to the Senshi in fury. "Hey, that was my fight!"

His teeth gritted as he fumed. Stupid sister making him wear this stupid armour so he could live out her stupid dreams of being a stupid Senshi just because he had these stupid powers. He was eighteen years old, damn it! How did he let himself be talked into playing her stupid superhero game? And then when he finally found something to fight, he doesn't even get 20 seconds with it before someone butts in and takes the creature down!

"What are you talking about?" The dark-haired Senshi walked towards him. "You were way outclass-" She gasped as she drew close enough to see him clearly. "It can't be!"

"What?" Yukio looked around him to see if there was something behind him. His green hair flew around, reminding him that he needed to get a haircut.

"It's been four years..." the Senshi breathed. "We thought you died with the Dark Kingdom!"

"With the what?"

Sailor Mars stepped up to him and slapped him across the face. Before he could react to that, she hugged him. "Don't ever do that again," she muttered.

Yukio blinked, then blinked again, still too confused to be angry over the slap. He looked down at the total stranger who was hugging him, his all-green eyes wide, before he shouted out, "Damn it all, what the hell is going on here!?"


End file.
